Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

Inspectorate (Independent Boarding Schools)

Mr. Judd: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many of Her Majesty's Inspectors have been allocated to preliminary investigations in preparation for the recognition of private schools; how many man-hours they have spent and what is the estimated cost of this operation; how many children are being educated at the schools covered; what is the number of Her Majesty's Inspectors; what is the number of children in the public sector of education; and if he will make a statement.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Miss Alice Bacon): In England, 28 Inspectors are specifically assigned to give part of their time to the exercise aimed at raising standards in independent boarding schools not recognised as efficient. The cost of the time which they, with specialist colleagues, devoted to advisory visits to the schools in the autumn term, 1968, was about £12,000. Similar costs are expected in the spring and summer terms, 1969, and plans are being made to double the rate of inspection from autumn, 1969, so as to complete the advisory visits by summer, 1970. The total cost of this part of the exercise will, therefore, be about £105,000.
The answers to the other parts of the Question are, respectively, nearly 25,000, 527, and just over 7½ million, and that I think that there is no need for a further statement at this stage.

Mr. Judd: While I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply, does she not agree that that is a considerable subsidy at public expense for the private sector of education? Does not it reveal the need for a more radical approach to the private sector?

Miss Bacon: I think my hon. Friend will recognise that we have been pressed very hard from both sides of the House and all parts of the country to bring these schools up to an efficient standard. We have a duty to ensure that the children in them are given a proper education or that the schools close down.

Sir E. Boyle: But is it not a shade rough to grudge the independent schools this help at a time when a number of them, and particularly the I.A.P.S., are extremely keen to raise standards and want to see a clear distinction in the public mind between the recognised schools and the schools that are merely registered?

Miss Bacon: I think the right hon. Gentleman will see from what I said that I could not go along with my hon. Friend's view.

Colleges of Drama and Music (Student Intake)

Mr. Eadie: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what increase there has been in the student intake in colleges of drama and music in England and Wales compared with universities, since 1962 to the latest convenient date; and what estimate he has made of the size of the future student intake.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mrs. Shirley Williams): Figures are available only of the total number of students attending colleges of drama and music in England and Wales maintained by local education authorities or recognised as efficient. At these colleges, which do not include several major independent institutions, the total number of students increased between 1962–63 and 1967–68 by 21·8 per cent. In universities in England and Wales (excluding the former colleges of advanced technology) the increase in student numbers in all subjects during this period was 43·5 per cent. The increase in numbers of students of music and


drama between 1965–66 and 1967–68—figures for earlier years not being available—is 20·5 per cent.

Mr. Eadie: The figures my hon. Friend has given will be studied with great interest by the House. Is she aware that there is a widening interest throughout the whole United Kingdom in such things as drama and music? Does she agree that some of the youngsters passing out of our schools and universities are probably as good as any previous generations?

Mrs. Williams: There has been a marked increase in interest in both drama and music in the schools. Our main concern is to make sure that people who study these subjects can find employment afterwards.

University Teachers (Negotiating Machinery)

Mr. Lane: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what progress there has been in his discussions with the Association of University Teachers; and if he will make a statement.

The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Edward Short): I refer the hon. Member to my Written Reply to my hon. Friend, the Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Ford) on 27th February.—[Vol. 778, c. 364–5.]

Mr. Lane: I have seen that Reply, but in view of the strength of feeling among the university teachers will the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues make sure that there is the utmost urgency in the discussions? Does he agree that one possible solution may be a special type of review body, such as that for doctors and dentists?

Mr. Short: I agree that there is a good deal of urgency in the matter, but the hon. Gentleman will also agree that it is very complicated. I have very carefully studied the proposal he put forward in our debate in January.

Teachers' Salaries (Negotiating Machinery)

Mr. Lane: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what proposals he has for improving the negotiating machinery for school teachers' salaries.

Mr. Edward Short: I have no proposals.

Mr. Lane: Does not the Minister agree that there is room for improvement in the procedure of the Burnham machinery so that the voices of all the different teachers' organisations can be fully heard? Will he be ready to use his good offices when the opportunity arises to help bring about such an improvement?

Mr. Short: I have had no approach from anybody about the Burnham difficulties. May I also distinguish between the machinery and procedure. The machinery is statutory, having been laid down by the House as recently as 1965. The procedure is a matter for the Committee itself. I am told by the other teachers' organisations and the local authorities that if any of the minority associations wish to discuss the procedure they would be only too happy to talk about it.

Mr. Brooks: In view of the unhappy situation which has developed at Liverpool, and still persists, arising out of negotiating machinery arguments, will my right hon. Friend indicate what protection is available to teachers who exercise the right enjoyed by many workers to work to rule without having all their pay deducted?

Mr. Short: I do not think that this can be talked about in purely industrial terms. There is no rule book for teachers as, say, for boiler-makers. The teachers have a contract with the local authority and they either keep the terms of the contract or they do not. This is really a matter between the local authority and the teachers. If the teachers are aggrieved about some of the conditions in the contract, it is, like any other contract, a matter for negotiation between the two parties to it—the local authority and the teachers.

Mr. Dudley Smith: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will now take steps to set up a new and independent body to deal with all questions affecting the salary structures, benefits and employment conditions of teachers.

Mr. Edward Short: No, Sir.

Mr. Smith: Is it not a fact that a depressingly large number of teachers have lost faith in the Burnham Committee, and will not that confidence be restored only by the introduction of some new form of comprehensive negotiating machinery?

Mr. Short: I think that the hon. Gentleman ought to be clear about this: if he wants to scrap the Burnham machinery, he ought to say whether he wants to depart from the principle of negotiation and go for referring teachers' salaries to something like the National Board for Prices and Incomes. If the hon. Gentleman wants to retain negotiations, it is difficult to see how at the end of the day he will have anything very different from the present system, where local authorities are on one side of the table and teachers are on the other.

Mr. Christopher Price: Did my right hon. Friend read the speech of his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity during the prices and incomes debate three weeks ago when she said that her Department was looking into the whole question of settling public service salaries? Is my right hon. Friend being consulted about this, and what views is he putting forward to those discussions?

Mr. Short: This is a Government inquiry, being carried out by officials for the Government, into all the issues involved in fixing pay in the public service, and, of course, my officials are involved in it.

Mr. Dunn: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the present system has led to some unsatisfactory conditions? The N.A.S. on Merseyside has made this abundantly clear. Can my right hon. Friend give guidance to Merseyside, particularly to the Liverpool authority, on this pressing problem?

Mr. Short: I know the feelings of the N.A.S., but we must recognise that for the first time for a number of years the Burnham machinery has reached agreement. The fact that one minority association dissents does not mean that the machinery is defective.

Secondary Education Reorganisation (Norfolk)

Mr. Derek Page: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science

whether he will make a statement regarding progress on the reorganisation of secondary education in Norfolk.

Miss Bacon: I have received no plan from the local education authority but I believe that proposals for the area of the King's Lynn divisional executive are under consideration and I hope that these will be submitted as soon as possible.

Mr. Page: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the great concern among teachers and parents at the terrible delay and the consequent delays in the rebuilding of urgently needed schools? Will she use her good offices to expedite this reorganisation as quickly as possible?

Miss Bacon: Yes. We have been doing everything that we can. I hope that Norfolk will soon be able to let us have some proposals. My hon. Friend will know that I have deferred my decision on the secondary school building programme until we have a clearer indication of the local authority's intentions for reorganisation on comprehensive lines.

Mr. J. E. B. Hill: Does the Minister agree that there are special difficulties in Norfolk mainly related to a very large geographical spread of schools, which makes it difficult to put forward proposals? Can the right hon. Lady confirm that the authority has undertaken not to put forward any building proposals which are not compatible with the future reorganisation scheme? Also, I express the hope that the Minister will visit Norfolk next month.

Miss Bacon: I recognise there are difficulties in producing a scheme for the whole area at once. But I think that we could expect the local authority to produce schemes for particular divisional areas. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will shortly be visiting Norfolk for two days, and he will be able to see these at first hand.

Mr. Derek Page: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what steps he is taking to provide for consultation of teachers' organisations during the preparation of schemes for the reorganisation of secondary education.

Mr. Edward Short: My predecessors and I have made it clear to local education authorities that we expect them to have close and genuine consultation with


teachers. Circular 10/65 suggests ways of achieving this but recognises that the precise arrangements cannot be prescribed from the centre.

Mr. Page: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in the King's Lynn division, where plans for reorganisation are now in the final stages, teachers' organisations as such have not yet been consulted and that there is very considerable feeling on the matter among the teachers?

Mr. Short: I hope that the local authority will consult the teachers before arriving at any final plan. It is a case of holding the balance between the right and, indeed, the duty of the local authority to take decisions and its acceptance that teachers have a great deal of expertise and a great deal to contribute in the matter.

Pre-school Play Groups

Mr. Carter-Jones: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will take steps to give direct financial support to established and recognised pre-school play groups to assist them with a proportion of their costs; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Edward Short: Pre-school play groups are not schools, nor do they provide an educational service within the meaning of the Education Acts. For this reason neither I nor local education authorities have power to give them direct financial assistance under the Education Acts—although I do make grants to the Playgroups Association and the Save the Children Fund towards their headquarters expenses. I know that a number of education authorities assist play groups with loans of equipment and accommodation and with advice. Financial assistance can be given by local authorities under powers conferred on them by other Acts, and they have been invited under the second phase of the urban programme to make proposals for projects which will attract special grant from the Exchequer.

Mr. Carter-Jones: While accepting what my right hon. Friend has said about this matter, may I ask whether it would not be better to use a small amount of money and revise the Act, if necessary, to assist pre-school groups, because it is a

good form of nursery education to get off the ground? Is it not also a good example of enlightened self-interest?

Mr. Short: This is what we are doing in the urban programme. Under the first phase 34 local authorities were assisted. Under the second phase we have invited all local authorities to apply. As I have pointed out, local authorities have power to give assistance to play groups, but under the Act which gives effect to the urban programme, they will be able to get a 75 per cent. grant for this expenditure.

Mr. J. E. B. Hill: Would the right hon. Gentleman say that this lack of legal power that he has is something that he would wish to remedy in the new Education Bill?

Mr. Short: Yes, I think so. I think that play groups do a very good job. But I repeat that there are a number of Acts, apart from the Education Acts, which empower local authorities to give assistance. If we now approve those projects under the urban programme they will rank for 75 per cent. grant.

Mr. J. E. B. Hill: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science which local education authorities have now appointed pre-school play group organisers or advisory officers.

Mr. Edward Short: I have no information about this. Local education authorities do not inform me of appointments to advisory posts.

Mr. Hill: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the comparatively few local authorities which have appointed such advisers have found that they have been of great value? Will he, therefore, advise other local authorities, particularly those with educational priority area problems, that it would be highly desirable for them to appoint such officers?

Mr. Short: I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of these people. The recent circular on the second phase of the urban programme referred to this matter in specific terms and said that local authorities would in some cases first wish to appoint an organiser and that the cost of that organiser would, of course, rank for the 75 per cent. grant.

Deaf-blind Children

Mr. Ashley: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what recommendations on the education and training of deaf-blind children he received from the meeting called by his department on 18th March, 1968, and attended by representatives of the Department of Social Services, local authorities, the Royal National Institute of the Deaf, the Royal National Institute of the Blind, the National Association of Deaf, Blind and Rubella Children, and other interested persons; and what action he has taken on these recommendations.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Denis Howell): The meeting was held in order to pool experiences, and no recommendations were made. There have been follow-up meetings with the Department of Health and Social Security, and a conference was convened last year for teachers and other specialists, and another is planned in June this year.

Mr. Ashley: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is regrettable that no recommendations for action were taken at that conference? Does he further agree that the fact that only 17 out of 208 deaf-blind children are in special schools which provide for both disabilities is really deplorable? Is he aware that the parents of the remaining 191 are anxiously awaiting action by the Government?

Mr. Howell: It may be regrettable that there was no specific recommendation. But that was not for us; it was for the conference. My hon. Friend will appreciate that we are anxious to give as much help as we can to these extremely unfortunate children. The numbers are very small indeed. To deal with deaf-blind children requires tremendous expertise on the part of the teachers, and the number of teachers with those capacities is small. There is also the difficulty that the provision of schools is for the local authorities, not for us. The best hope that I can give my hon. Friend is that we are seriously considering whether the categories of very severely disabled children, including deaf-blind children, ought to be looked at again nationally to provide a specific service for them.

Sir E. Boyle: While recognising the desire of the hon. Gentleman and his Department to help in the matter, if there are so relatively few deaf-blind children and not many teachers with the special skills, is not this a case for concentrating efforts and trying some pilot project for the education of this category of children?

Mr. Howell: I accept that there is much substance in that suggestion. It is one of the matters that we are considering.

Mr. Ashley: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what provision he is making for the long-term training and education of children with defects of both sight and hearing; and if he wil make a statement.

Mr. Denis Howell: I have nothing to add to the reply I gave my hon. Friend on 6th February.—[Vol. 777, c. 148–9.]

Mr. Ashley: While thanking my hon. Friend for that comprehensive and very helpful reply, may I ask whether he is aware that, although his Department has shown some concern for young deaf-blind children, it has shown very little concern for the older deaf-blind children? Does the Minister really appreciate that the dedicated people who are transforming young human vegetables into human beings are seriously disturbed over the lack of facilities provided by the Department for the future of these children?

Mr. Howell: I know that there is this concern, and I can assure my hon. Friend that it is shared by my right hon. Friend and me. We think that the first priority is the problem of early identification of children who have both disabilities. If we get that right we can then deal with the other things that we want to do. We are concentrating most of our attention on that problem at the moment.

Mr. Marten: When does the Minister hope to conclude his thoughts on the possible pilot scheme mentioned in the previous Question?

Mr. Howell: I could not possibly give a date, but I know that the hon. Gentleman will accept from me that it will be done as urgently as possible.

Mr. Eadie: Is my hon. Friend aware that many parents in Scotland are grateful for the education provided by, for


example, the Mary Hare Grammar School? Is he further aware that there would be no protestations from Scotland or anywhere else if we were to agree to a substantial increase of public expenditure in this sphere?

Mr. Howell: I am not responsible for what is happening in Scotland. If Scotland is leading the Sassenachs it will not be the first time. I will take account of what my hon. Friend has said.

School Milk

Mr. Turton: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many local education authorities are restricting the issue of free school milk to maintained primary schools; and what steps he is taking to advise these local authorities to end this discrimination.

Mr. Denis Howell: This information is not available. Local education authorities have discretion in this matter under Section 78(2) of the Education Act, 1944, and it is not for me to advise them how to exercise it.

Mr. Turton: Surely the nutritional needs of these children have nothing to do with where or how they are educated? The hon. Gentleman ought to point that out to these local education authorities.

Mr. Howell: My Department has issued a number of pronouncements and we have had debates in this House, about the nutritional value of school milk. We cannot exercise control in a matter which Parliament has specifically said is for local authority discretion.

Mr. Carter-Jones: Is my hon. Friend aware that some excessive cuts are being made in certain areas, resulting in the cutting out of certain independent schools? One need not have a view about independent schools but all children should be treated equally.

Mr. Howell: I can understand my hon. Friend's argument, but I do not think that further public subsidies to independent schools ought to head our priorities in education.

European Space Research Organisation

Mr. Marten: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a statement on British co-operation

in the European Space Research Organisation.

Mrs. Shirley Williams: At the European Space Conference in November we stated our intention to continue to collaborate in European space research for a further programme period up to 1974. The budget adopted for 1969–71 represents a rate of growth of 6 per cent. per annum for E.S.R.O. over the 1968 level. No country has yet made any commitment on the rate of expenditure after 1971. In addition to the scientific programme, the Government have agreed to contribute this year to studies in E.S.R.O. leading to economic and technical assessments of applications satellites.

Mr. Marten: Can the hon. Lady say whether the Government are generally in favour of the proposition of a space observatory? Secondly, are they in favour of the general proposition that E.S.R.O. should devote part of its time to application satellites as well as to purely scientific satellites?

Mrs. Williams: It is difficult to give a clear answer to both parts of that question while studies are going on, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, but on the second part of the question I would say that we have indicated our interest, in principle, in application satellites. We have made it clear that we can finance studies this year, and in the light of these studies we shall make a decision.

Further Education Awards (Reading)

Mr. John Lee: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what guidance he has given to local education authorities about the application of cuts in further education awards; and what representations on this matter he has received from Reading Borough Corporation.

Mr. Edward Short: None, Sir.

Mr. Lee: Will my right hon. Friend make some representations to Reading Borough Council? Has he seen the council's estimates and how it has cut back grants for further education? Would not my right hon. Friend agree that this is a most retrograde policy for a local authority to indulge in?

Mr. Short: All I know is that in deciding on the rate support grant we


allowed for an increase of 8·6 per cent. in the two years from 1967 and 5 per cent. in the following year. We also allowed a slight reduction for further implementing the Pilkington Report. These are the only actions that we have taken about further education. This is not a cut. It is a considerable increase.

Drug Taking (Schoolchildren)

Mr. Gurden: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will take steps to combat the use of drugs among schoolchildren by way of lectures and film demonstrations in schools and colleges.

Mr. Denis Howell: Health education is a matter for local education authorities and for individual schools and colleges. Use is made of teaching materials, including films and talks, and the advice of medical officers in my Department and of the Inspectorate is increasingly being sought.

Mr. Gurden: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there is a serious shortage of home-produced films, and that the only ones available are some out-dated American ones which have to be imported? It would take only a few hundred pounds for voluntary organisations to produce films. Will the hon. Gentleman indicate to local authorities that something ought to be done about this?

Mr. Howell: Our responsibilities in respect of health education are such that we want to see more up-to-date films, if they do not exist. I was in touch with a hospital in the city which the hon. Gentleman and I represent about the possibility of basing such film manufacture on a hospital there. I am not certain of the up-to-date position, but I undertake to write to the hon. Gentleman about it.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Does the hon. Gentleman know the extent of the increase in the taking of soft drugs like cannabis in universities and colleges of further education? What is he doing to stop this increase?

Mr. Howell: Last week I dealt with figures about drug addiction which showed that for the last year available there was a slight decrease. I was not drawing any deduction from them—it was

far too premature to do so—but at least it was a hopeful sign.

School Building Programme

Sir J. Langford-Holt: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what increase in the total school building programme he proposes to make between the years 1968–69 and 1969–70.

Mr. Edward Short: I recently announced increases amounting to £9·5 million in the 1969–70 starts programme. The total for that year is now £138·5 million compared with £129·8 million for 1968–69.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the changes which have been deferred in the schools ought to have been made years ago? If it is true to say that something should have been done in 1964, it means that it is very true to say that it should have been done in 1969.

Mr. Short: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. There are thousands of schools throughout the country which ought to have been pulled down years ago. There are 7,000 schools which were built before 1880. It is a pity that the Conservative Government did not deal with rather more. The present building programme is more than twice the building programme during the last year of the Conservatives.

Sir E. Boyle: If we are going to bandy figures about, can the right hon. Gentleman say how much the school roll, in particular the primary school roll, has gone up in recent years?

Mr. Short: The school roll is increasing by about 3 per cent. a year. All I am saying is that the building programme is twice as big as it was when the right hon. Gentleman left it.

Choice of School (Parents' Rights)

Sir J. Langford-Holt: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will give an assurance that he will comply with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 16th December, 1966, which upholds the rights of parents to choose for their children schools other


than those established by public authorities which conform to such minimum educational standards as may be laid down or approved by the State.

Mr. Edward Short: In this country parents already have such rights.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Is it the right hon. Gentleman's policy to adhere to, and maintain, those rights?

Mr. Short: This country signed the International Covenant in September of last year, but, as the hon. Gentleman knows, it does not come into force until 35 countries have ratified it. So far only one country, Costa Rica, has ratified it. The Covenant says nothing about any subvention from public funds by way of direct grant, rate relief or tax relief for parents who send their children to private schools.

Mr. Molloy: On the question of parents' rights, can my right hon. Friend say whether, if a local authority wishes to decimate a good school for no particular reason in direct opposition to the wishes of the parents of the children at that school, as in the case of the Walpole School, Ealing, he gives as much cognisance to the views of the parents as he does to those of the local authority?

Mr. Short: I think my hon. Friend knows that at the moment I am considering the position of that school. I have to consider all the objections which have been made, and I hope to give my decision very shortly.

Continental Shelf (Mineral Surveys)

Mr. J. H. Osborn: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what arrangements he has made for mineral surveys on the Continental Shelf; and how much of the time of the "John Murray" is devoted to applied survey projects as against pure oceanographic research.

Mrs. Shirley Williams: The Institute of Geological Sciences, a component body of the Natural Environment Research Council, is conducting surveys on the United Kingdom Continental Shelf to assess geological structures which may indicate mineral deposits.
The whole time of the Royal Research Ship "John Murray" is devoted to re-

search all of which has practical significance.

Mr. Osborn: I welcomed the opportunity of visiting the "John Murray" at the oceanology exhibition at Brighton, but is the hon. Lady satisfied that the survey ships available to the Institute for oceanography are spending enough time on mission-orientated surveys with tangible medium-term and short-term benefits to this country?

Mrs. Williams: The hon. Gentleman's interest was much appreciated and we are grateful to him for visiting the ship. To give a precise answer, 80 per cent. of the time of this ship is spent specifically on geological boreholes and studies, as is a good deal of the time of chartered ships as well.

Mr. Dalyell: In view of the demands on the time and resources of the "John Murray", would it not be practical to leave some of the mineral surveying to the Navy, which would be glad to do it?

Mrs. Williams: That question is primarily for the Secretary of State for Defence, but a number of other ships have also been chartered for this purpose.

Oceanographic Research

Mr. J. H. Osborn: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what was the total expenditure, incurred by the organisations and councils for which he is responsible on oceanography and on oceanographic research in 1968; how much of this was spent on pure research, and how much on applied research and technologies which will give a return on the moneys allocated to this purpose; and what will be the amount and nature of the expenditure in the current year.

Mrs. Shirley Williams: The total expenditure incurred by the Natural Environment Research Council on Oceanography and Marine Science for the year 1967–68 was £1,902,000. Estimated expenditure for 1968–69 is £2,320,000.
There is no clear-cut distinction between pure and applied science in this field. The council encourages studies of the sea and its resources, many of which are proving of considerable practical and economic significance.

Mr. Osborn: Is the hon. Lady satisfied that, to use the Secretary of State's phrase at Brighton, the projects are being chosen "carefully and professionally" and that, in particular, attention is being paid to work on the Continental Shelf and the pursuit of minerals, oils and gases near our shores, if not further away?

Mrs. Williams: I trust that no Minister is ever completely satisfied, but a good deal of time is being spent surveying the Continental Shelf. It is hoped that this will be completed in 10 years, but the concentration will be on the most economical parts first. In particular, the studies done in Cardigan Bay, the southern Irish Sea and the southern Hebrides area are proving extremely valuable and suggest that there will be real commercial returns from hydrocarbons in those areas.

Laboratory, Library and Student Union Facilities (Joint Use)

Mr. Christopher Price: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will seek powers to encourage the joint use of laboratory, library and student union facilities between universities, colleges of education, polytechnics and colleges of further education.

Mrs. Shirley Williams: My right hon. Friend and I have already encouraged the sharing of facilities on a number of occasions and we shall continue to do so wherever it seems possible.

Mr. Price: Is my hon. Friend aware that there is a gross disparity, particularly in the provision of student union facilities, sometimes with university students rating four and five times as much grant per student per facility as those at colleges of education and colleges of technology? What is she doing to bring these figures together? It is one of the causes of the present student unrest.

Mrs. Williams: I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We would welcome suggestions for local co-operation of this kind and would give them every possible help, but the matters which are concerned here are not purely for the Department of Education and Science but also for such bodies as the National Union of Students and, for that matter, the local authority associations.

Sir E. Boyle: The hon. Lady will remember that I raised this matter in our

debate on the universities. Would she not agree that, apart from the issue of disparity—which I agree is important—from the point of view of the future rising cost of higher education it is highly important to bring together here the University Grants Committee and representatives of local authorities? Will she promise that she and her right hon. Friend will do their best to pursue this matter?

Mrs. Williams: The right hon. Gentleman and I are singing in harmony on this. He may also recall that I replied in that debate on the same lines. He will recollect also that the U.G.C., in its memorandum of guidance, strongly supported co-operation of this kind. There has been more than one Ministerial speech supporting this, and it would be very helpful for us to have specific local initiatives taken in this field.

School Counsellors (Secondary Schools)

Mr. Christopher Price: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what steps he is taking to encourage local authorities to appoint school counsellors in secondary schools.

Miss Bacon: I am watching the development of the service provided by school counsellors, but it is too soon to reach the conclusion that they should be specially appointed in all secondary schools.

Mr. Price: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, particularly in careers guidance, it is unreasonable to expect ordinary serving teachers with a full timetable to undertake the whole burden in any particular secondary school? From this point of view, although she cannot agree to a school counsellor in every secondary school, how many have already been appointed?

Miss Bacon: I agree about the desirability of school counsellors and I should like to see them appointed in secondary schools, but some teachers feel that this duty should be shared among existing teachers rather than made the subject of special appointments. Perhaps my hon. Friend would give me notice of his question about the numbers at present in secondary schools.

11-Plus Examination Results

Mr. Brooks: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether his Department continues to obtain the annual statistics of 11-plus performances in each primary school where the examination is still held.

Miss Bacon: The Department has never made a practice of collecting annual statistics about 11-plus results.

Mr. Brooks: In view of the fact that the local authorities do, could my right hon. Friend explain why parents appear to have no right of information about the 11-plus, particularly since information about the 18-plus and the 21-plus is made freely available by schools, not least the public schools, and the universities?

Miss Bacon: It would be invidious to publish statistics of individual passes of the 11-plus. I would rather devote my energies to bringing an end to the 11-plus altogether. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that recently we have been considering the reorganisation proposals in the area which he has in mind, and his local authority will be given the result in the next few days.

Olympic Games

Mr. Charles Morrison: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what negotiations he has undertaken with the governing bodies of sport about arrangements for Government assistance to them for the next Olympic Games; and if he will make a statement.

Sir G. de Freitas: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what are his plans for financial assistance to those concerned with preparing for Great Britain's representation in athletics at the next Olympic Games.

Mr. Denis Howell: I have now completed discussions with each of the governing bodies concerned with the 1972 Olympic Games based On a four-year programme covering training and participation in international events. The governing bodies are providing further information as a result of these discussions, and this will, I hope, enable us to assess the extent to which it will be possible for the Government to assist them with this part of their work.

Mr. Morrison: Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that if governing bodies

are to be able properly to organise the training and the deployment of coaches for the Olympic Games it is very important that their administration should be very strong? What assistance, financial or otherwise, are the governing bodies now being given towards the strengthening of their organisation?

Mr. Howell: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has taken an early opportunity to rebut what "Crossbencher" wrote last Sunday. I cannot give a full reply until I have completed the very detailed investigations which I am making into the whole of this question. I met 21 governing bodies of sports in January and February, and there are some further discussions still to come, but we hope to make announcements on these matters very soon.

Sir G. de Freitas: Before giving public money to athletics—my Question No. 49 relates to athletics—will my hon. Friend insist on a modern organisation in this field, on the lines, for instance, of the Byers Committee's recommendations?

Mr. Howell: There is a very delicate balance between Government and the freedom of sports bodies which I have to observe. Although I try to give public money where I think it will do most good as an incentive, the governing bodies of sports have freedom. But I am happy to tell my hon. Friend that I believe that we have made substantial progress. The proposals which I understand will be reaching me very soon, although not on all fours with the Byers Committee's Report, go a considerable distance, in respect of administration, coaching and international participation, to meet those recommendations.

Mr. Holland: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what support his Department is giving towards a 2,000-metre Olympic training course for the Amateur Rowing Association on the River Trent at Holme Pierrepoint, Nottinghamshire; and when the course will be available for training.

Mr. Denis Howell: I recently discussed this project in detail with representatives of the local authority concerned. There are some considerable difficulties in the way of designating Holme Pierrepoint as a national rowing centre, and further consideration and discussion


will be needed before any progress will be possible.

Mr. Holland: Will the Minister bear two points in mind; first, the central position in the heart of England of the proposed site, and, secondly, the fact that a 2,000-metre course on the Trent could be provided during 1970 in plenty of time for training to start for the Olympic Games in 1972?

Mr. Howell: These possibilities are well known to me. The Lee Valley was designated on the recommendation of the Amateur Rowing Association for a national centre, and I could not get out of that commitment without, in all honour, consulting the Lee Valley Authority first.

Sports Council (Report)

Mr. Charles Morrison: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will now publish a report on the work of the Sports Council.

Mr. Denis Howell: The Sports Council intends to publish a further report in the summer.

Mr. Morrison: I welcome that announcement, but is it not intended that this should be an annual event, since I have no doubt that it would be much appreciated if a report were published annually by the Sports Council?

Mr. Howell: The Council itself decided that annual reports are usually fated to go into the waste-paper basket very early and that it would be much better to set a new example and publish reports when it had something substantial to say. It is now issuing its second report, two years after its first.

Mr. Rose: Would my hon. Friend also ensure that the work of the regional sports councils is included in this report? Would he confer with the Leader of the House to ensure that after four years we have a debate on sport and the Sports Council?

Mr. Howell: No one would welcome a debate on sport more than I, having been four years with this responsibility and unable to tell the House what I have been up to. I can assure my hon. Friend that there will be an appendix dealing with each region specifically.

Part-time Teachers (Conditions of Employment)

Mr. Carter-Jones: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what directions are given to local education authorities regarding the conditions of employment of part-time lecturers at technical colleges, schools of art and other establishments; and if he will make a statement.

Mrs. Shirley Williams: The only statutory requirement is that a part-time teacher employed for more than a year in further education should be employed under a written agreement or minute defining the conditions of service. Those conditions, for all part-time teachers, are a matter for agreement between them and their employing authorities.

Mr. Carter-Jones: Are we not in grave danger of losing some extremely useful lecturers, some of whom have this as their sole source of income? Are not the variations in treatment which exist putting these people at grave risk economically?

Mrs. Williams: Yes, Sir. I agree with my hon. Friend that the position is far from satisfactory. However, my Department has no power of review over the dismissal of part-time teachers. The Education (No. 2) Act, 1968, will in some ways help because these people will be covered by articles of government which apply to colleges of further education. I suggest that they would be well advised, however, to organise themselves within a professional association or trade union.

Computers

Mr. J. E. B. Hill: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what research he is initiating into the educational value of computing and the use of computers in schools.

Mr. Edward Short: I have myself initiated no research, but material for study will be provided by the projects referred to in the reply by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State to the Question on 6th March by the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings)—[Vol. 779, c. 654–5]. The Schools Council is in touch with a wide range of developments and will be considering possible further action in this field.

Mr. Hill: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when the results of this inquiry are likely to be available so that decisions may be made about the desirability of including more of these activities in syllabuses?

Mr. Short: A great deal of this work is being done, not only by the Schools Council and the National Computing Centre but also by my Department, which is running short courses. This has a great bearing on the matter. But I will keep in mind the hon. Gentleman's point about the need for the results of the Schools Council's research programme to be widely known without delay.

Sports Scholarships

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science when he expects to announce his plan for sports scholarships; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Denis Howell: I cannot yet say when it will be possible to make an announcement. The details of a possible scheme are being discussed with all those who would be concerned with its implementation. I am encouraged by the large measure of support which the idea of such a scheme has already received.

Football (Chester Committee's Report)

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will publish a statement on the progress made for implementing the recommendations of the Chester Report on Football.

Mr. Denis Howell: I have now discussed the Chester Committee's recommendations with the Football Association and Football League, and we shall meet again as soon as they have had time to consider the questions raised. I hope to have a meeting soon with the Scottish Football Association and Scottish League.
As I informed the House on 5th December—[Vol. 774, c. 1807–8.]—I have also met the Football Association of Wales, and a joint working party with the Sports Council is now engaged in considering the future of Welsh soccer.

Mr. Dalyell: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the growing, though probably unjustified, belief that the Chester Report

is accumulating dust, and will he do something to progress chase this matter?

Mr. Howell: I assure my hon. Friend that the Report is not collecting any dust. There have been two meetings this week, one lasting two hours and the other one-and-a-half hours. Further meetings with the Scottish authorities are planned to take place soon. The Report contains some far-reaching recommendations, and it is, therefore, bound to take some time for the football authorities to consider the matter in detail.

Mr. Arthur Davidson: What progress has been made in discussions of another topic mentioned in the Chester Report—namely, the link between violence on the field and violence among spectators?

Mr. Howell: As I have explained to the House before, this subject is being considered by a working party under the chairmanship of Sir John Lang, and I am glad to tell my hon. Friend that it is making good progress and hopes to report soon.

Student Grants (Parental Contributions)

Mr. van Straubenzee: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he will take steps to provide that rent and rates, or repayment of mortgage principal, shall be allowable expenses in calculating parental contribution for purposes of student grants.

Mrs. Shirley Williams: No, Sir. This would mean a substantial increase in public expenditure which cannot be considered at the present time.

Mr. van Straubenzee: Does not the hon. Lady recognise that the deductions mentioned in the Question are the same as those applied for school meals when working out the parental or national contribution? If it is good enough for one, why is it not good enough for the other?

Mrs. Williams: The hon. Gentleman will realise that the deductions are based on Income Tax deductions, which do not include these particular figures. I can only repeat, with regret, that public expenditure considerations will not allow us to take this step at present.

Oral Answers to Questions — INDUSTRIAL REORGANISATION CORPORATION (MINISTERIAL CO-ORDINATION)

Mr. St. John-Stevas: asked the Prime Minister whether he will co-ordinate the work of the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, the Minister of Technology and the President of the Board of Trade in relation to the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): The Industrial Reorganisation Corporation falls within the responsibilities of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, who works in close consultation with my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade and the Minister of Technology and any others of my right hon. Friends who may be concerned.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Since I have been unable to obtain satisfaction from this unholy Ministerial trinity on the proposed take-over bid of the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation for Brown Bayley, and in view of the effects of this on my constituents, will the Prime Minister take personal responsibility for this matter and pay a visit to Chelmsford, which will at least avoid his being upstaged yet again by the Leader of the Opposition, who is coming to Chelmsford next month?

The Prime Minister: That would be the last thing that would concern me.
To answer the more serious part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question—I recognise his great concern over this; indeed, I have read the statement which he issued a month or so ago about his anxieties—this stems from the decision of the I.R.C. to help to integrate the British ball-bearing industry, a step which is necessary. As for the hon. Gentleman not being satisfied, I have read what he said, but I should have thought that the reply of my right hon. Friend would have assuaged some of his anxieties.

Sir G. Nabarro: Having regard to the further deterioration in the trade figures and the regression in the February outturn, how can the right hon. Gentleman argue that the I.R.C., with its tripartite control, is proving successful?

The Prime Minister: The I.R.C. was set up by statute with power to take its own decision in these matters. The hon. Gentleman—who will, no doubt, take some satisfaction in the longer term from the trend of exports, whatever may happen in one month—will, I am sure, be prepared, with his customary generosity, to pay tribute to what the I.R.C. has done in restructuring some of our export industries.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER (VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES)

Mr. Marten: asked the Prime Minister when he next proposes to pay an official visit to the United States of America.

The Prime Minister: I would refer the hon. Gentleman to my reply to a Question by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hector Hughes) on Thursday, 6th March.—[Vol. 779, c. 159.]

Mr. Marten: When the right hon. Gentleman does go, will he take the opportunity of visiting the international monetary authorities in America? Will he give them an assurance that Her Majesty's Government have no intention whatever of rephasing the overseas debt which they have incurred in such a way as to place an extra burden on the successor Government after the next General Election?

The Prime Minister: Usually when I go to the United States on an official visit I take the opportunity of visiting the representatives of the International Monetary Fund.
The latter part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question is for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, I hope, will himself be visiting Washington before too long. The hon. Gentleman can then no doubt put that question to him.
I recall how much difficulty we had through the inheritance of such a large deficit—[Interruption.]—which involved substantial borrowing, the first repayment of which was made last month out of revenue.

Mr. Raphael Tuck: Is my right hon. Friend aware of a growing body of


opinion in this country, the United States and Canada in favour of an open free trade association? Will he canvass this with the President of the United States when he next goes to America?

The Prime Minister: I am aware that a number of hon. Members and many people outside are interested in this proposition. I have not heard anything in my recent discussions, including the visit of the President, to suggest that this is something which, if canvassed, would be likely to become an early reality.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTER OF OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT

Mr. Peter M. Jackson: asked the Prime Minister whether he will reinstate the Minister of Overseas Development in the Cabinet.

The Prime Minister: I have no plans to do so at present, but my right hon. Friend has the opportunity of being present whenever issues in any way affecting the work of his Department are under consideration.

Mr. Jackson: That is all very well, but would not my right hon. Friend agree that his early decision to downgrade the appointment caused some consternation outside? Would he not re-look at or re-read Peace Aims pamphlet No. 57 of 1953, in which he will find it argued that the office held by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Prentice) should be regarded as of comparable importance with that of the Secretary of State for Defence?

The Prime Minister: I do not think anyone underrates the importance of the task or the way in which the task is performed by my right hon. Friend. I and other Ministers take a close interest in the work of his Department, and he always has full facilities for being present when anything connected with the work of the Department is being discussed.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER (VISIT TO PORTUGAL)

Mr. Hooley: asked the Prime Minister if he will make an early official visit to Portugal.

The Prime Minister: I have at present no plans to do so, Sir.

Mr. Hooley: If my right hon. Friend has occasion to have conversations with Senhor Caetano, will he take the opportunity to make clear to him that he should suspend all hostilities by Portuguese arms in Mozambique and Angola and particularly in attacks on a friendly Commonwealth country?

The Prime Minister: I dealt a week or two ago with the question of Zambian anxieties and referred to important discussions with the President of Zambia. As far as our attitude to various aspects of Portuguese West African policies are concerned, it requires no personal visit for Her Majesty's Government to be able to make clear our views to the Portuguese Government. They were set out yet again in the last communiqué of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference.

Mr. Heath: The right hon. Gentleman said that he had no plans to visit Portugal. Can he tell us whether he has formed any plans to visit Nigeria?

The Prime Minister: It seems that Nigeria is a different country from Portugal and that this is a different question. Nigeria is to be debated this afternoon and this evening, and the right hon. Gentleman's curiosity could best be satisfied during that debate. If I had had a Question on Nigeria I should have answered it.

Mr. Heath: Is the Prime Minister really saying that he wants to keep an announcement of a forthcoming visit to Nigeria for a dramatic intervention in the last few minutes of today's debate? Would it not be fairer to say to the House now whether or not he is going?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. The right hon. Gentleman will note that both at Christmas-time and in the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference these matters were discussed with the Nigerian Government. I should vastly have preferred them to be discussed outside the context of this debate. The House will wish this afternoon to be concerned with the very real and difficult issues of Nigeria, which are issues of policy which we are prepared to discuss in the House.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: Can we get back to the Question? What should be the attitude of this country towards Portugal, which at present is trying to jeopardise our campaign to bring Rhodesia back into legality and is offending Commonwealth countries which are joining with us in that task? Is it not time that we did our best in N.A.T.O. and through E.F.T.A. to put pressure on Portugal in this respect?

The Prime Minister: While this is certainly related to the Question on the Order Paper, my hon. Friend will be aware that I have been asked this question a number of times before. We regard the enforcement of the Security Council Resolution as a matter for the United Nations and have lost no opportunity of letting the Portuguese Government know Her Majesty's Government's view on this matter.

Oral Answers to Questions — FLOOD RELIEF AND PREVENTION (MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY)

Mr. Goodhart: asked the Prime Minister if he will transfer responsibility for flood relief and flood prevention work from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to the Ministry of Public Building and Works.

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. I do not consider that this would be appropriate.

Mr. Goodhart: Is the Prime Minister aware that over much of the country flooding is becoming an urban rather than a rural problem? Is he aware that as the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has been going slow both on flood relief and on flood research, it would be appropriate to transfer responsibility for relief work to a smaller Ministry where it might not be submerged?

The Prime Minister: I do not think all the hon. Member's hon. Friends or my hon. Friends who represent West Country constituencies would agree with his diagnosis that this is largely a matter of urban flooding. There has been some very serious rural flooding. For reasons I have explained in the House, I think it

right that the Minister of Agriculture Fisheries and Food should have these duties while the Minister of Housing and Local Government—not the Minister of Public Building and Works—should have responsibility for local authority relief. I am sorry that the hon. Member thinks that relief work is going slow, because in the last two major disasters the Government contribution in relation to private contributions has been about three-to-one compared with one-to-one in floods when the Conservative Party was in office.

Mr. Ellis: Will my right hon. Friend certainly not do any such thing as is suggested in the Question because, so far as I know, not only is agriculture but defence, police, science and technology and other Ministeries getting in on the act, all except the Ministry of Public Building and Works, and they should be kept out of the act? Will he agree that what is wanted is that one Minister should be responsible over all these other Departments to prevent people who are making inquiries having to batter around among 16 different authorities?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend, in his understandable enthusiasm, missed out the Met. Office. He will recall that one of the things on which there have been complaints which we have been trying to put right is ensuring that when the Met. Office has a warning of weather which might lead to acute flooding it should be quickly passed on so that local authorities, conservancy boards and everyone else concerned may take action.

Sir D. Renton: Is the Prime Minister aware that what matters most now, whichever Ministry is in charge, is for the present Government to continue the good work of their predecessors by carrying on with flood relief schemes and allocating plenty of money for that purpose?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir; within the limitations of public expenditure, a subject which this side of the House takes seriously, we are doing that. The right hon. and learned Gentleman will have noticed that in relation to carrying on the work of our predecessors in relief we have trebled their ratio.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER (VISIT TO NORTHERN REGION)

Mr. Leadbitter: asked the Prime Minister what plans he has to make an official visit to the Northern Region.

The Prime Minister: I hope to be there in July, Sir: and I visited the region twice last year.

Mr. Leadbitter: While the Prime Minister will be aware that during Question Time hon. Members have asked him to go to the United States of America, Nigeria, Portugal and Chelmsford, will he bear in mind that the Northern Region is an important place in the affairs of this Administration and that while £13 million aid to that region in 1963 has been increased to over £100 million this year, nevertheless there are still important acute problems in the region, and that in spite of his recent visit we would like to see him there again?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend should recognise that it is not always necessary to go to a region to take a close interest in what is being done in the matter of bringing work to it. He will have noticed that the seasonally-adjusted figure for wholly unemployed last month was 4·3 per cent. compared with 51 per cent. last August. We are still not satisfied although the figures are lower at present on a seasonally-corrected basis than in many months in 1963.

Dame Irene Ward: Would the Prime Minister allow me to have a hand in arranging a visit?

The Prime Minister: I could think of nothing that would give me personally more pleasure.

Oral Answers to Questions — RHODESIA

Mr. John Lee: asked the Prime Minister if he will now recommend to Her Majesty to appoint a Prime Minister for Rhodesia.

The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend that Rhodesia should have a constitutional Prime Minister, but this requires a prior return to constitutional rule.

Mr. Lee: Does not my right hon. Friend realise how serious this matter is? If by misfortune there should be a change of Government in two years' time, is it not perfectly clear that a Conservative Government would sell out to Mr. Smith and the chances of our having a reasonable settlement would have gone for ever?

The Prime Minister: I do not accept any of the assumptions underlying my hon. Friend's question—none of them, not even the one that he does not think I am treating the Rhodesian question seriously enough. On the last point, I think it is absolutely right to say, as I have more than once, that the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home), who visited Rhodesia a year ago, and the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd), who has just returned, both made it clear that there was no future in anyone in Rhodesia seeking to play one party off against another in this House, for all of us are committed to the principles which this House has laid down.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Reverting to the Prime Minister's main Answer, would it not also be a good thing if this country had a Prime Minister who had the support of the electorate?

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Sir Arthur Vere Harvey.

Mr. Roebuck: Would it not be a good idea if we had a Leader of the Opposition in whom——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman can address me now only on a point of order.

Mr. Roebuck: I am sorry, Sir. I thought you were calling me for a supplementary question.

MEMBERS (DECLARATION OF INTEREST)

Sir A. V. Harvey: On a point of order. On Tuesday of this week my hon. Friend the Member for Clitheroe (Sir Frank Pearson), in putting a supplementary question to the Minister of Public Building and Works, declared an interest, I imagine in the brick industry.
I queried this with you, Mr. Speaker, because, after nearly 24 years in the House, I could not recall an occasion when an hon. Member had declared an interest when asking a question. I realise that at the moment this matter is under general consideration, but until it is decided hon. Members could be in some difficulty if they are to declare interests when they ask Oral Questions in the House. [Interruption.] Mind your own business.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am minding my own business.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Mr. Speaker, that was no reflection on the Chair. I was being goaded by some of the Left-wingers.
In giving your Ruling on Tuesday, Sir, you said:
I should have thought that it is a good thing for an hon. Member to declare his interest."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th March, 1969; Vol. 779, c. 1148.]
I should be very grateful if you could, on reflection, Mr. Speaker, give a further opinion on this rather important matter.

Mr. Speaker: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has raised this point again and, indeed, that he was courteous enough to mention to me that he intended to raise it again. He has raised a point that he raised during Question Time on Tuesday when, in reply to him, I was defending the hon. Member for Clitheroe (Sir Frank Pearson), who had declared an interest.
On the issue itself, it is not necessary for an hon. Member to declare a personal interest when putting a question. This Ruling of mine merely repeats a Ruling my predecessor gave on 27th January, 1955, at c. 415. The hon. Member for Clitheroe, who declared a personal interest on Tuesday, did so out of courtesy and should not be reproved because he did something out of courtesy.
However, for hon. Members to declare a personal interest when putting supplementary questions at Question Time regularly would cut into Question Time and slow it down. They do not have to declare such an interest.
On the broader issue, hon. Members will find a much more comprehensive Ruling on 5th February, 1953, at c. 2039.

Mr. William Hamilton: Further to that point of order. There are a good many hon. Members, on this side cer-

tainly, who believe that a very good precedent would be created if hon. Members had to declare an interest at Question Time, even if it meant an extension of Question hour to enable them to do so, because there are very many hon. Members, many more than is commonly appreciated outside, who have financial interests in several of the Questions that they ask.

Mr. Speaker: I have ruled on the position as it is. If the hon. Gentleman seeks to change it, there are Parliamentary methods of doing so.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Heath: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will state the business of the House for next week?

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Fred Peart): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:

MONDAY, 17TH MARCH—Supply [I2th Allotted Day]:

Vote on Account of the Civil Estimates and Defence Central Estimates, 1969–70.

Opposition Prayer on the Industrial Training Levy (Agricultural, Horticultural and Forestry) Order.

It is expected that the Chairman of Ways and Means will order the postponed consideration of the Brighton Corporation Bill and the York Corporation Bill for seven o'clock.

TUESDAY, 18TH MARCH—Continuation of the Committee stage of the Parliament (No. 2) Bill.

WEDNESDAY, 19TH MARCH—Supply [13th Allotted Day]:

Air Estimates, 1969–70, Vote A.

Remaining stages of the Immigration Appeals Bill and of the Genocide Bill [Lords].

THURSDAY, 20TH MARCH—Supply [14th Allotted Day]:

Navy, Army and Air Money Votes.

Motion on the Eggs (Protection of Guarantees) Order.

FRIDAY, 21ST MARCH—Private Members' Bills.

MONDAY, 24TH MARCH—Supply [15th Allotted Day]:

Debate on Foreign Affairs, on a Motion for the Adjournment of the House.

On that day the Question will be put from the Chair on all outstanding Votes.

Mr. Heath: First, when will the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity be making another statement to the House about the very serious industrial dispute at Ford's, the importance of which is again emphasised by the grave deficit in the trade balance announced today?
Secondly, who will be responsible for answering the Prime Minister's Questions when the Prime Minister himself leaves for Nigeria after his dramatic intervention in the closing minutes of the debate later today?

Mr. Peart: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity made a statement yesterday. I will inform her that the House wishes to be kept continually informed about this very serious matter. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will accept that the Government wish to keep the House in touch with what is going on. The right hon. Gentleman will realise the procedure which applies when the Prime Minister is away.

Sir Knox Cunningham: Where has he gone now?

Mr. Speaker: Order. I would remind the House that there is a debate ahead for which the House has been waiting for some time. If we can restrict the number of business questions at least one more of the 36 Members who wish to speak in the Nigeria debate will be called.

Mr. Boston: Does my right hon. Friend accept that there is still an urgent need for a statement about the timing of the local inquiries announced by the Roskill Commission, especially as the first one is due to take place in such a short time—on 5th May? Will my right hon. Friend have consultations about the opportunities which will arise for a statement next week when my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade is due to answer Questions on Wednesday?

Mr. Peart: My hon. Friend raised this matter last week. I have noted it. I said

that I would convey what he said to my right hon. Friend. This has been done. I will bear it in mind.

Sir W. Robson Brown: Is the Leader of the House aware of the grave anxiety in certain parts of Surrey arising out of the disastrous floods of last September? I am deeply dissatisfied with some of the Answers that Ministers have given to my Questions on this vitally important matter. [HON. MEMBERS: "Reading."] I now ask the right hon. Gentleman to provide time for a debate before the Easter Recess.

Mr. Peart: The hon. Gentleman has made his point. I will note it, but we cannot have a debate on it next week.

Mr. C. Pannell: Will my right hon. Friend deny that the Recess is to be shortened and put back for the summer to make way for the concluding stages of the Parliament (No. 2) Bill?

Mr. Peart: My right hon. Friend should not indulge in hypotheses. Let us wait and see.

Mr. Hastings: In view of the various Motions which have been put down, signed by a large number of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides, and the grave doubts felt on both sides of the House about the working of the Land Commission, does not the Leader of the House consider that it would be far more sensible if we debated that matter on Tuesday next instead of the ridiculous Parliament (No. 2) Bill?

Mr. Peart: I know that the hon. Gentleman has strongly expressed his view against the Parliament (No. 2) Bill. I should not equate it with the Land Commission.

Mr. Molloy: Does my right hon. Friend agree that we ought to have an early debate on Rhodesia, if only to give hon. Members on this side an opportunity to challenge the two-faced attitude of the Leader of the Opposition in bellyaching about law and order in this country while supporting treachery, repression and rebellion against the Crown in Rhodesia?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must ask a business question, without additional matter.

Mr. Peart: We cannot have a debate next week, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Braine: In view of the serious and, so far as I am aware, unprecedented events in Anguilla, where, according to reports, a Minister has had to leave under duress, will the right hon. Gentleman arrange for the Foreign Secretary to make a statement at the earliest possible opportunity?

Mr. Peart: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Lubbock: Has the Leader of the House noted the serious criticisms made of Government policy with respect to Select Committees by the hon. Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Mr. Mackintosh) in The Times today? Although I do not share the gravamen of the criticisms, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will arrange for an early debate on the Government's policy with respect to the expansion of the Select Committee system in general.

Mr. Peart: The hon. Gentleman should not take too seriously the hon. Member to whom he refers. If it be necessary to make a reply to the Committee, it will be done.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I again remind the House that there is ahead a debate on Biafra and Nigeria.

Sir H. Harrison: Will the Leader of the House give more time beyond 10 o'clock for the important Air Estimates next week, particularly in the light of what happened last night on the Army Estimates, when various hon. Members could not make their speeches and others such as myself, had to cut very interesting speeches short?

Mr. Peart: I dare say that a shorter speech from the hon. and gallant Gentleman would probably be better.

Mr. Roebuck: Will my right hon. Friend put some reality into next week's deliberations on the Parliament (No. 2) Bill? What discussions has he had with the Leader of the Opposition about the progress which he expects to be made next week? Has the Bill still got the support of the Leader of the Opposition? Does my right hon. Friend not think that it would be more productive to consult the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), the real Leader of the Oppo-

sition, who is opposed to the Measure, so that we could know where we were?

Mr. Peart: I can only say that this is a Government Bill and that we shall proceed with it.

Mr. Godber: Will the Leader of the House confirm that the much delayed statement on the Annual Agricultural Price Review will be made next week, and will he tell us who is to make it?

Mr. Peart: It has been announced, and my right hon. Friend will make it.

Mr. Hector Hughes: Will the Leader of the House give time next week for my Motion No. 206, about public rights to beaches, which is not the same matter as that raised by the Brighton Corporation Bill next week?

[That this House, realising the inroads which have been, and, in the case of the proposed Brighton Marina, which are being made to the public rights to Her Majesty's foreshores and beaches, calls on the Government to take urgent steps to stop those inroads and, where those inroads have taken place under statute or otherwise to reverse them and so maintain the public right of full and free access to Her Majesty's foreshores and beaches for the purpose of sea bathing, swimming and other open air and marine enjoyment.]

Mr. Peart: Not next week, Sir.

Mr. Kenneth Baker: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the growing concern among back benchers on both sides about the length of speeches in the Chamber? So far this month, when we are supposed to be in Lent, a period of self-denial, there have been two speeches over an hour, four speeches over three-quarters of an hour, and 21 speeches over half an hour. Will the right hon. Gentle-man consider asking the Select Committee on Procedure to look again at the question of restricting back-bench speeches to a quarter of an hour and Front Bench speeches to half an hour?

Mr. Peart: I have great sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman says, but it is not a matter for next week's business.

Sir T. Beamish: Is the Leader of the House aware that the Standing Committee which is considering the Auctions


(Bidding Agreements) Bill adjourned yesterday after a Government defeat, and that this arose entirely from the failure of the President of the Board of Trade to make a statement giving the House his conclusions following the Departmental inquiry? Will the right hon. Gentleman give an absolute assurance that such a statement will be made before next Wednesday?

Mr. Peart: I am aware of that, and I replied earlier to an hon. Member about it. I am informed that one of the difficulties is that the whole question of defamation and the law relating to it arises on the matter. I shall convey the hon. Gentleman's views.

Mr. Clegg: Is the Leader of the House aware that, if the Government were next week to bring in a Bill to abolish the Land Commission, from our point of view on this side it would go through in five minutes flat?

Mr. Peart: I am not so sure, in view of the previous interventions of some of the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friends.

Sir Knox Cunningham: When will the Leader of the House announce the dates of the Easter Recess?

Mr. Peart: Next week.

Mr. Channon: May I press the Leader of the House further about the Auctions (Bidding Agreements) Bill? It is vital that we have the statement before next Wednesday; otherwise, the Committee will not know whether to proceed.

Mr. Peart: I accept that, and I have already given a reply about it. I hope

that what I have said will be accepted. I shall do all I can about it.

Mr. Jopling: Will there be a statement next week on the future of Levens Park, in Westmorland, which is threatened by a motorway? Will the Leader of the House draw to the attention of the Minister of Transport the fact that the Motion on this matter has already been signed by 150 hon. Members?

[Thas this House urges the Minister of Transport to take steps to find ways of diverting the M6 link road to Kendal, so that the incomparable Levens Park, the oldest landscaped park in England, now in its prime, can be saved.]

Mr. Peart: I am well aware of that matter. The hon. Gentleman is a neighbour of mine and he will understand that I appreciate his concern. I shall convey his views to my right hon. Friend.

Mr. van Straubenzee: In view of the widespread anxiety about the matter, will the Leader of the House next week table a Motion remitting to the Select Committee on Education and Science the question of the registration of the direct interests of Members in business matters outside the House? Will he take it that a large number of hon. Members who are personally affected have pressed for this for some time and would support him in so doing?

Mr. Peart: I understand that, but I cannot do it next week.

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Grey.]

NIGERIA

3.47 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Maurice Foley): We are all aware of the concern and genuine anxiety about the situation in Nigeria, and it is for that reason that the Government have given a day in which to debate the matter, which touches and affects us all.
The years since the beginning of decolonisation in Africa have brought progress towards maturity but also the instability which must always be a risk in independent States as they are rapidly formed from societies with marked tribal and cultural differences within themselves. It is in (his broad context of African development that we must see Nigeria's present problems.
Nigeria could not be immune from these nation-building pangs. Like much of Africa, Nigeria is a complex grouping of interlocked peoples and cultures. Her tribal pattern poses special problems of balance and imbalance which are at the roots of the present conflict. At the time of independence, Nigerian politics were based on regionalism. There were no national political parties, but three main regional ones based on the three main tribal groupings.
Under the regional arrangements embodied in the Constitution, there were in each of the main groups substantial minorities who felt that the system did not adequately reflect their own interests. Yet for six years these groups were able to work together and had time to adjust for themselves, had they wished, the basis of their independence. During this time, many Ibos were prominent in central Government in co-operation with the Northerners and favoured a firmly united Nigeria.
I remain convinced that despite all the harassment a peaceful solution to Nigeria's tribal problems was always possible. There was no need to go to war. In looking at what went wrong, we find faults and atrocities on both sides which have resulted in mutual fear and suspicion and a lack of trust. Yet in this, too, there are certain contradictions.
I had occasion to visit Nigeria many times in the mid-1950s, and I witnessed in the North, at Jos and Kano, incidents

involving Hausas, Fulanis and Ibos which were not very pleasant. This has been known for a long time. Yet at the same time as there was this friction, this abrasiveness, between the tribes, the Ibos were working and forging the Constitution of Nigeria. It was the Ibos, with the Northerners, who formed the Government at the time of independence.
What was true then is, I believe, true today, that Nigeria needs the Ibos and that the Ibos need Nigeria. This sentiment was reflected in a speech last November by General Gowon, at Zaria, when he said:
I sincerely believe that our reconciliation in this country will be achieved in a comparatively short time … it is now up to all Nigerians in privileged positions to do their best to heal the wounds of the Ibos as a people. On the other hand, our Ibo brothers must also learn from their past mistakes and strive to live in harmony with other Nigerians as equal partners for national progress.
Here, I must introduce a brief note of caution into our debate. We must remember that we are discussing the internal affairs of a sovereign, independent State. In many respects—and I make no apologies for this—we are intruding into the grief and private agony of Nigeria.

Hon. Members: With arms.

Mr. Foley: I shall come to that later.
Our present debate will be bitterly resented by many in Nigeria. Yet, despite all this, we cannot turn our backs on what is happening there. We are involved in it through our concern for the suffering, our links with Nigeria over the years, our interests and our people there. But we must remember that we can never turn the clock back. Independence is independence, and we cannot behave as a colonialist Power now that the Nigerians have their independence.
Our position should not be misunderstood through facile comparison with the neutrality adopted by some other countries. It may well be right for such countries to adhere to a policy of non-involvement, but we are the former colonial Power. We have links extending over 100 years. We have 16,000 of our people in Nigeria, great investments and much trade of enormous mutual benefit to Nigerians and ourselves. We could not avoid involvement; we had no other honourable option.
When Kenya and Tanzania appealed to us, we responded not just with arms but with troops to put down an internal rebellion, and most hon. Members applauded our action. When Nigeria is faced with a comparable threat, what do we do? Neutrality was never open to us. At the time of the independence of Nigeria, and other former Colonies, we handed over responsibility for defence. We were asked to help train its Army, which we did, and to provide the equipment and arms for that Army, which existed to preserve the nation of Nigeria.
Throughout the war of secession we have continued to allow the Nigerian Government to purchase arms in this country. Hon. Members know that we have limited the supplies of arms that we have allowed to be bought here. People will also know that the Federal Government have turned to other suppliers for aircraft and aerial bombs, and that the secessionists have also found no difficulty in finding suppliers of arms.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, in winding up the debate, will discuss more fully the implications of our arms policy. I ask the House only to bear in mind these facts when considering our policy, and that other Commonwealth countries in Africa have had, in their times of stress, the wish, desire and necessity to turn to us for help.
Perhaps I should immediately take up the burning issue which has probably animated many hon. Members in asking for this debate—the Federal bombing of civilians. We have all read the reports that have appeared on the bombing of civilians in Nigeria. We take them very seriously indeed. I receive, as we all do, propaganda from both sides, and it is often difficult to sort out fact from fiction. I want to repeat that there are no British planes bombing Biafra and no British pilots in those bombers. There are no British bombs being dropped on Biafra. But what is happening is cruel and militarily useless.
My right hon. Friend instructed our High Commissioner in Lagos to make representations to General Gowon. My right hon. Friend has twice seen the Nigerian High Commissioner. Sir Denis Greenhill has also been to Lagos to see General Gowon. They pointed out that

these attacks are seen as indiscriminate attacks on civilians, and pressed that immediate steps should be taken to ensure that the instructions to pilots to attack military targets only were scrupulously obeyed and publicised.
General Gowon replied that he had never approved indiscriminate bombing of towns; that the state of captured towns now in Federal hands proved this; that he regarded the ordinary people in rebel areas as fellow Nigerians; that the only bombing authorised was against military targets; and that the Federal authorities had had detailed information about numerous targets on the edges of towns and areas with large populations.
Hon. Members will have read in the Press extracts from the orders given to the Nigerian Air Force, which have been made public. General Gowon has said that he has never contemplated, and would not now contemplate, an attempt to break civilian morale by bombing. He does not believe that all Ibos are on the side of Ojukwu, and he also takes the view that bombing does not break civilian morale but makes the population more stubborn. He has further told us that anyone contravening these instructions would be ruthlessly dealt with, and that several have already been disciplined.
When Sir Denis Greenhill saw General Gowon, the General said that it was the Federal Government's policy, as far as was humanly possible, to limit air attacks to rebel air strips. I know from personal contacts with "Members of Parliament, missionaries and relief workers that there has been clear evidence of indiscriminate bombing. It is for this reason that we have made our representations and made it known quite clearly how much we refuse to condone this kind of action in Nigeria.
It is far from my intention to condone indiscriminate or avoidable bombing of civilians by either side. It is no consolation to say that there has been bombing by both sides, and that it was started by the Biafrans in bombing Lagos. A missionary priest told me that his church had been bombed by the Biafrans, and only four weeks ago in a village near Benin four people were killed by bombing by the Biafrans. But it is no consolation to us to talk about this. The plain realities are there for us all to see,


note and understand, and then bring what pressures we can to bear.
We must, of course, recognise that the war is largely a war on the ground; it is not an air war.

Mr. Keith Stainton: Will the Minister differentiate between discriminate and indiscriminate bombing? One would think that the larger proportion has been indiscriminate.

Sir Charles Taylor: Will the Minister tell us the nationality of the pilots of the planes which are flying in the Federal forces?

Mr. Foley: It is very difficult to answer the first question. Anyone who was involved in the Second World War will know how difficult it is to try to describe the differences between discriminate and indiscriminate bombing. It is an arbitrary division which it is very difficult to make. The plain fact is——

Mr. Simon Mahon: On a point of order. A great deal has been said about the interests of hon. Members in this matter. There has been one or two interventions. I think that the interests in Nigeria of those hon. Members who have intervened should be declared in such an important debate as this.

Mr. Speaker: There is no need for an hon. Member to declare an interest when he is making an intervention. We are on a very serious debate, and I think that we should get on with it.

Mr. Foley: I am quite ready to declare my interest. I want to see an end to this war, and the restoration of peace in this ravaged country.
In reply to the intervention of the hon. Member for Sudbury and Woodbridge (Mr. Stainton), I cannot differentiate, but the reality on the ground is that there has been bombing of hospitals, schools and churches and probably, too, of military targets.
In reply to the question of the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Sir C. Taylor), about the nationality of the pilots, I am informed that the pilots who fly the Ilyushin bombers are U.A.R. pilots. This is the information that I have at this moment.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: Does not this fact contradict the point made by my hon. Friend earlier, that General Gowon had given instructions to the pilots? I am assuming that, unless the instructions were given in Arabic, they would not be understood.

Mr. Foley: I am a little sorry that I gave way.

Mr. Andrew Faulds: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot have double interventions. Mr. Foley.

Mr. Faulds: This is very relevant. The accusation has been made that U.A.R. pilots are involved in the bombing. A statement was made over a year ago by the U.A.R. Government that this is simply not true——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has not got the Floor. He is intervening, and interventions must be brief.

Mr. Faulds: Will my hon. Friend accept that only last night I was talking to a member of the Egyptian Embassy and that this accusation was denied. There are no pilots seconded from the U.A.R. Air Force.

Mr. Foley: I do not want to go into detail on this. I am informed that the nationality of the pilots of the Ilyushins which are dropping the bombs in Biafra is U.A.R. But I do not want to take this any further.
Before I was interrupted, I was talking about the major part of this war being an infantry war. At the time when there was great pressure in the House and a great deal of publicity about genocide. General Gowon invited a team of international observers to go out and look for themselves and make their report. They have just issued a further report, the findings of which are consistent with their earlier reports. They report that they have not found evidence of genocide, and that the recent reference to atrocities in Port Harcourt and Ilele are without foundation. There is a great deal of rehabilitation work to be done in all the bombed areas. The tragedy is that war is war, and often it is the innocent people who suffer.
Reference has been made to arms. I have said why, for historical reasons, we


could not avoid being involved, and I will briefly deal with the question of an arms embargo. It was explained in the House that we stood ready to co-operate in any internationally enforceable arms embargo which could be arranged in the context of any agreement to end the fighting. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, when he winds up the debate, will develop this point and weigh up the pros and cons of possible lines of action.

Mr. John M. Temple: Before leaving that point, will the Minister be good enough to say whether these arms are being sold for cash or on credit terms?

Mr. Foley: I am not sure which arms we are talking about. If we are talking about arms which the Biafrans are purchasing, I do not know. In terms of the arms that we are selling to Nigeria, they are for cash. I cannot say what the position is about the arms which they acquire from other areas of the world.
If I may now turn to relief, during the last few months some hon. Members have had a chance of visiting both Biafra and the Federal held areas, to see for themselves the conditions. There is no doubt, from their reports and their observations, and from what we ourselves know, that starvation, and especially malnutrition, were severe in the summer, particularly in the Biafran areas. How severe, no one knows for sure. Since then, the relief effort has produced a dramatic improvement, but there is likely to be a serious carbohydrate shortage soon, even if it proves less catastrophic than was recently forecast.
Precision on the extent of the problem is impossible; all figures are largely guesses. This uncertainty over even the basic questions like the total population of the rebel areas makes planning difficult. The International Red Cross recognises the need for a proper impartial survey of the food situation in Biafra, and we have discussed this both with the Red Cross and with the United States Government. We hope that it will soon be possible to mount such a survey to establish the facts and figures.
One thing is universally recognised. The existing night flights into the rebel area are inadequate to provide the food and

medical supplies that are needed. A carbohydrate shortage will intensify the imperative necessity for an agreed surface route or at least for daylight flights.
Unfortunately, so far, the Biafran leadership have always imposed conditions on their willingness to accept a surface route or daylight flights, and this has made agreement impossible. Indeed, only recently Colonel Ojukwu said that he would refuse to accept supplies coming through Federal territory.
The Federal Government have agreed to and supported daylight flights carrying foodstuffs and medical supplies into the airfield at Uli, and they have recently expressed their willingness to let relief supplies be taken into the rebel area by a land route, under international supervision by observers of the O.A.U. and the relief organisations.
Most important of all, the Federal Commissioner for External Affairs has announced his Government's readiness to hand over their airstrip at Obilago for the exclusive use of the relief organisations. Under this offer the relief supplies would be flown by day to this airstrip, which is roughly six miles from the Federal front, subject to impartial international inspection. The foodstuffs would then be carried by the relief organisations by road into Biafran territory.
Clearly, this would meet all possible fears about the risk, real or imaginary, of Federal tampering with relief supplies and, above all, it would allow a far greater volume of supplies to be carried into Biafra than the night air lifts can handle. The offer has been widely welcomed, and we fervently hope that Colonel Ojukwu will accept it so that there will be the possibility of a much greater increase of relief for his people which will turn this hope into a reality.
The Federal Government's attitude throughout has been consistent in this matter of relief supplies. They have combined a military blockade with a willingness to allow relief supplies to be provided to those who are involved in the rebel held areas. I can think of no precedent for such action in what may be called a civil war or a secession. While imposing a military blockade, the Federal Government are willing to allow relief supplies of food and medicine to all those in need.
We must recognise that for the Federal Government and for Colonel Ojukwu the problem is how to devise a formula whereby a surface route will be acceptable and be fair both politically and militarily. This has been the dilemma for many months. Suggestions have been made which have made military nonsense to one side or the other. We think that this proposal for the Obilago air strip offers the greatest possible hope for being able to supply relief in the quantities needed throughout the whole of Biafra.
I should like now to deal with the contributions which we are making to this relief. Since last June, the contribution by the Government has been almost £1 million. Of this amount, £700,000 took the form of a contribution to the International Red Cross in response to its appeal for funds to finance the relief operations up to the end of the year, and then up to February. Our contribution was the second largest Governmental contribution made so far to the International Red Cross. [HON. MEMBERS: "Which was the largest?"] The United States. In making it, we suggested to the Red Cross that part of it might be set aside for requirements up to the end of February. Voluntary organisations in Britain have themselves contributed more than £1 million in addition to the Government's equal amount.

Mrs. Anne Kerr: Will my hon. Friend tell the House how much this country has gained from the sale of arms while we have been giving out the food?

Mr. Foley: No.
Last month the International Red Cross prepared a new relief plan for the period from March to August. This plan envisages total expenditure of £84 million over the six months compared with £6 million spent by the Red Cross during the immediately preceding six months' period. The plan envisages that the numbers of people receiving relief in the Federal areas should be increased from 1 million to 1,250,000 and that the amount of food and medical supplies being taken by the air lifts of both the church organisations and the International Red Cross into the area controlled by Colonel Ojukwu should be

stepped up from 6,500 tons a month to about 7,500 tons.
The plan recognises that the amount that can be sent to Biafra is limited by the capacity of the night air lifts and there is accordingly to be provision for large stockpiles of supplies in the Federal areas which would enable greatly increased quantities to be sent immediately into the rebel areas the moment there was an end to the fighting. The plan is, therefore, for a series of stockpiles of food around the perimeter of the fighting lines so that there can be an immediate reaction as soon as progress is made and we have political discussions on a cease-fire, or a complete and total settlement.
In response to the new appeal of the Red Cross, we now propose, subject to the approval of Parliament, a further contribution of £250,000 as a cash contribution to the International Red Cross to supplement any balance remaining from our last December's contribution of £700,000. At the same time, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Overseas Development has agreed, in consultation with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, that we should offer to the Nigerian Federal Government a grant of £500,000 for the purchase of food grains, in accordance with the provisions of the Rome Food Aid Convention. The intention would be that the food grains would be devoted to relief purposes in the Nigerian war area, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, as the body responsible for co-ordinating all relief, would be responsible for arranging the distribution of the food.
In accordance with the provisions of the Rome Food Aid Convention, the £500,000 grant will not include the costs of freight and insurance for the food grains. I therefore propose, again subject to the approval of Parliament, that in the special circumstances of this case provision should be made for a special grant of £100,000 to the Nigerian Federal Government to enable it to meet the freight and insurance charges.
Finally, as Parliament was informed on 5th March, we have given an assurance to the Save the Children Fund that, again subject to Parliamentary approval, the Government will continue to underwrite the costs of the Fund's Nigerian relief


work in the next financial year to a total of £90,000. I am sure that hon. Members will agree that we should continue to make a contribution to enable the work of the Fund's teams to continue.
It will, I think, also be the wish of the House that provision should be made for other kinds of direct assistance or relief by the British Government of the kinds which we have undertaken in the current financial year. I therefore propose that there should be additional provision of £250,000 for our own direct relief assistance, including the £90,000 for the Save the Children Fund teams.
To sum up, we propose that, as the Government's new contribution to Nigerian relief, we should give a total of £1·1 million, comprising a grant of £500,000 for food grains and £100,000 to cover the associated freight and insurance costs, £250,000 as a cash grant to the International Red Cross and £250,000 for our own direct expenditure on relief, including assistance for the Save the Children Fund medical teams.

Mr. Peter Mahon: Does not my hon. Friend agree that these humanitarian aims, welcome as they are, are mainly concerned with the perpetuation of this horrible war? Would not our Herculean efforts be better directed to terminating this holocaust?

Mr. Foley: I am not sure that one desire contradicts the other. We are dealing with the reality of needs and how we can meet them, and with the reality of the war and how we can solve it. They are entirely distinct and I hope that we shall not confuse the two issues.
In conclusion, I turn to the Motion which has been signed by so many right hon. and hon. Gentlemen. It is in three parts. It refers particularly to increasing the relief effort. I hope that from what I have said the House will respond and endorse the proposals which I have made. The Motion also calls for an international embargo on the supply of arms. I have already touched on this subject and my right hon. Friend will deal with it at length.
Thirdly, and most important, the signatories have asked the Government to use their good offices to bring about a meeting between General Gowon and

Colonel Ojukwu. Everyone must wish that such a meeting could come about and result in a political settlement. Unfortunately, however, the history of attempts at mediation—too many to recount now—shows no lack of mediators, but only the lack of a basis on which the two sides could talk constructively.
When it has proved possible to bring the two sides together, as happened in Kampala, Niamey and Addis Ababa, it has still proved impossible to bring them to an agreement. This has not deterred us and others from further attempts at mediation. Most recently, during the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, we had some hope that we might bring both sides together. The leader of the Federal Delegation, Chief Awolowo, made a public statement in which he said that he was willing to meet, without condition, the leaders of the Biafran side who were present in London.
This was a great chance—talks without preconditions—which may have helped to get everyone off the hook. Unfortunately, the representatives of Biafra here were unable to agree and were unable to participate in this discussion. I believe that it is in contact with both sides that we will ultimately effect the change. We ourselves must continue to hope and to work for a peaceful settlement and not a military solution.

Mr. Jeremy Thorpe: In this context, will the hon. Gentleman speak of the initiative of Colonel Ojukwu, which was announced this morning, about the possibility of a month's truce?

Mr. Foley: I read it on the tape, but I have not seen the detailed text and I should not like to comment before knowing that this was a serious proposal. I am sure that it will be examined. It is one of the many proposals which must be looked at.
We must hope and work for a peaceful settlement and not a military solution, a settlement which recognises the need on each side for a sense of security for the future, a settlement which provides a basis for national reconciliation.

4.20 p.m.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: It was right for the Government to concede this time for a debate on the Nigerian war, because both


sides of the House have been impatient for it. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs was given a difficult task by the Foreign Secretary in opening the debate. He has done it with the usual care and courtesy which we expect from him. For that we are grateful and for his account of the extra financial assistance which the Government are willing to give for Nigerian relief, and for seeking to disentangle some of the facts from the welter of rumour which comes out in the propaganda of both sides of this unhappy civil strife.
In this House the feeling, naturally, is high. The bombing of civilians and a denial of food to women and children put man to shame; and our knowledge and conscience in this House is sharpened because we have so lately been at the giving and receiving ends of a modern war. In a civil war, in particular, chivalry dies. Everybody has been deeply exercised by the accounts of the bombing in Biafra substantiated by newspaper correspondents who, of course, report what they see, though there is a lot they do not see.
I believe, therefore, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary would also feel, that it would be wise to ask Colonel Ojukwu—because nobody can form policy on newspaper reports however well they are documented—whether he will not accept trained international observers in Iboland from the United Nations. This ought to be done, and done quickly.
The reason why we are debating this matter—and I believe that the hon. Gentleman was right to stress this—is not that Britain has intervened in one side or the other in a Nigerian civil war. It is because Nigeria is a country—and there is here a situation worth marking—to which Britain, by tradition, has been a supplier of arms, and that country has been caught up in a civil war. There is quite a valid distinction between those two positions.
It must be said at once that no planes, no bombs and no pilots have been British. The question the House has to decide, therefore, is whether a cutting off of such supplies as are given to Nigeria, and have been given for a number of years, will be a contribution to peace for all Nigerians,

for all Africans living in that country, not just in one part or the other.
We could, of course, make a gesture to salve our conscience, but before we do so we have a duty to examine, as a House, the implications of our action in the wider context of the Commonwealth, of the continent of Africa and of the organisation of peace. But, first, the House will be interested—and this took up part of the hon. Gentleman's speech—in two particular aspects of the matter: first, the organisation of relief to the hungry and the prevention of starvation; and, secondly, the establishment of a cease-fire during which political solutions for Nigeria's constitutional problems may be found.
The hon. Gentleman has told us, and we are grateful for the information, what the British Government can do. We do well to pause to pay tribute to what has been done by the Red Cross, the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic organisation. All of them have done work which cannot be too highly praised in the cause of human relief.
When we come to concentrate on the question of food, the conclusion to which the Foreign Secretary originally came is, I believe, still valid: that a complete solution to the feeding problems of this large area can be reached only if an open corridor can be created by land and water. But pending this, there are two things that can be done. The hon. Gentleman mentioned one of them. He says that the Federal Government have now agreed that Obilago Airport should be made available and land transport can take food from that field into Ibo-held territory.
That would do a great deal to supplement the food that is now able to arrive only by three or four flights by night, by reason of war. If that should at any time fail there is an alternative which I was going to suggest had the hon. Gentleman not told us of it.
It is that there should be an area of land designated into which air drops could be made, and that both sides should agree that these flights should not be molested by day or night. The hon. Gentleman's suggestion is rather better; should we have to fall back on something else, this is a possibility. It would make a considerable contribution to relief and particularly to the immediate need


of carbohydrates pending the organisation and supervision of a land and water corridor.
Secondly, the hon. Gentleman turned to the Motion on the Order Paper, which we are not debating, but of which, nevertheless, we now take notice, and which expresses the instincts, in part at any rate, of a great majority of the House that there should be an international ban on armsfrom all countries outside Nigeria. The Government are almost certainly right in anticipating a refusal by the Russians to co-operate, and in expecting a veto to be applied in the Security Council of the United Nations. But I must say to the Foreign Secretary that I do not quite understand why he has not sponsored a motion to this effect in the Security Council.
I was not convinced by the argument of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister the other day when he said if such a ban were applied to supplies by all the great suppliers of arms in the world this would be undermined by private sales and a black market. In those circumstances, of course, arms would somehow come across the frontier; but if the Russians did agree, and if the Security Council gave the directions and arranged for the inspection of the reception centres in both territories, I believe that an international ban on arms, accompanied by policing, would see to it that the great majority of arms did not get through into this territory.
I hope, therefore, that the Foreign Secretary will put a motion before the Security Council on this matter, a matter which, in this respect, is external to Nigeria's domestic afairs. It will probably be vetoed, but if it is, why not expose the position? At any rate, that would do something to help people to realise the sinister realities there may be behind this Nigerian civil war.
Thirdly, there is the desirability of a cease-fire and a truce which Nigerians can use to settle their own political structure, something so simple to say and so difficult to do; because I take it that a truce would not be valid as a reality unless it were accompanied by the supervision of the reception of arms in both parts of the territory.
If there were not such an arrangement, a truce could simply be a recipe for a

renewal of the war on rather a larger scale after a certain time. There are three possibilities for the provision of a policing force for a cease-fire or truce. There is the Commonwealth. I had understood that, at the earlier stages, when the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Secretariat was trying to negotiate a peace, Colonel Ojukwu at one time came near to accepting a Commonwealth force. Now he is said to object to it. Could the Foreign Secretary tell us whether this is true?

Mr. Hugh Fraser: I do not blame Colonel Ojukwu.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: My right hon. Friend says that he does not blame Colonel Ojukwu, but the Commonwealth is no longer British in direction. It is now directed by a Secretary-General and we are only partners in the association. The Commonwealth has great experience in diplomacy and negotiations, experience which would not be found in the Organisation of African Unity, although this is another body that might be used.
There is the United Nations. In general, there is an objection to the United Nations interfering in the internal affairs of a member State, and it is one to which I subscribe. If the United Nations once began to do that there could be no peace anywhere—if such a procedure was countenanced. But, if the United Nations was invited to Nigeria by the parties for the purpose of supervising a truce, it would be a different matter. General Gowon should be asked whether he would agree to this proposition, on the basis that such a force would be withdrawn upon success being achieved, or in the event of a breakdown of negotiations.
It would be interesting for the House—because we must think in terms of peacemaking, of a cease-fire, of a truce—to know which of these organs of international conciliation the Foreign Secretary thinks might be used. The question which must not be shirked is: if the only service that Britain can render to all Nigerians is in some way, through international help, to stop the war, would the unilateral cancellation of arms contracts do anything to serve that end?
There are several considerations which have to be weighed, all of them political. It must be understood that this would not be a negative act. These contracts with the Nigerian Government were made


upon independence, they have been running for a number of years, and to deprive the Federal Government and the Federal forces of the assistance of British arms would be a positive act. It would put them, at least for some time to come, at a short-term disadvantage. Let us not delude ourselves into thinking that this would be a negative act of no importance.
In the long term there is another and very political consideration which the House must face. If Britain were to cut off her arms supply, not in a matter of weeks or months, it is true, because the turnover would be difficult for the Nigerian forces, then the Soviet Union is ready and eager to take over the whole of the arms supply of Nigeria. A situation in which Nigerians would be forced to look to Communist Russia as the sole champion and sole friend of all Nigerians is not one which anyone can contemplate without dire foreboding.
The second consideration with which the House ought to be concerned is that there is scarcely an African country—perhaps the blame for this lies with the former colonial Powers, but let us leave that on one side because it is history—which does not contain within its borders strong tribal minorities. The actual constitutional pattern on the ground in Nigeria is no longer Britain's concern, nor is the degree of autonomy that it might be able to arrange within a federation. There is no doubt, leave Britain out of this at the moment, that among many African countries and the Organisation of African Unity, there is the most acute concern lest the break-up of federal Nigeria should be the signal for fragmentation on comparable lines throughout the continent of Africa.
That may be Africa's fate. The roots of national government, of modern administration, are a very recent growth. They are too shallow to take much of a strain; they have to be nourished all the time. Fragmentation may set Africa back to its beginning. That may be so, but let us not consciously contribute to it.
We must place in the scales of judgment the fact that Nigeria is a Commonwealth country. The Government in Lagos have lately been accepted as the proper representative at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference. Within the context of Commonwealth cooperation it has been the practice of

successive British Governments to foster contact between the military services in Commonwealth countries.
We set great store by this. Through the years we have tried to maintain the supply of arms which such Commonwealth Governments decide are needed for their security. We have only to look down the roll at the Imperial Defence College, something in which all parties in this House take considerable pride, to see the importance attached, in the past at any rate, to this aspect of Commonwealth co-operation.
Some will weigh these matters—and this is a very individual matter when we are concerned with moral values of this kind—and conclude in the name of realism that the Commonwealth will, anyhow, disintegrate, that Africa was tribal, will return to tribalism, and why not? They will say that Communist Russia, if not beaten to it by Communist China, will penetrate and obtain mastery over a number of African countries as she has already done to some extent in Egypt. They will accept all these things as inevitable, and maybe they are right. Realism has the unfair advantage that it sounds real.
I have been considering these questions. I have seldom been the prey of more varied and conflicting emotions than in trying to decide the rights and wrongs of this matter, in this cruel Nigerian war. My first feeling, and I think that it is shared by a number of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen, is frustration that the cards we hold to exercise any influence are so few, and their value so small. That being so, there comes, secondly, a desire to throw in our hand, to wash our hands of the whole dirty business and to present them as clean.
However, I ask, if we do this what is our motive? We have to ask ourselves honestly, are we more concerned with our reputation for righteousness, or are we more concerned with the future of Nigerians and Nigeria? If, after having made a gesture and shown our hands to be clean, there were even a suspicion left that this gesture was empty, our conscience would soon begin to prick us as sorely as it does today. No one can forecast the course of this war, but I want to see one more supreme international effort made to see if the parties


in Nigeria cannot be brought together in the interests of one whole Nigeria, however the boundaries of the political structures may in future be built.
I do not disguise from the Foreign Secretary that I think there have been shortcomings in the Government's handling of this matter in the past. They were slow off the mark in recognising the danger signals; their information has been faulty and misleading. I am not sure I see in the Prime Minister a sort of super-charged dove, if he intends to go to Nigeria to try to work a miracle. I hope that this will not be trotted out at the end of the debate as the kind of gimmick which we come to expect from the Government on these occasions.
Suppose, as the House must do, we take the Government's policy as it is presented to us now and we weigh the wide political considerations concerning the Commonwealth and the Continent of Africa which are all part of this question. If I am asked to leave tomorrow aside, because nobody can forecast what will happen in this war, and asked the direct question "Should we stop the supply of arms to the Federal Government?", I should say, "No, not for today".

4.41 p.m.

Mr. James Griffiths: We have listened to a very interesting speech made by the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home), who always approaches these problems in a constructive manner. I agree with him in many things, but I also disagree with him.
I thank my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs for the way in which he opened the debate and for the courteous way in which he has received representations from Members regarding both Nigeria and Biafra. I thank him for what he has said about relief and join in expressing the hope that on both sides, Biafra and Nigeria, there will now be real co-operation to ensure that these plans are carried out successfully.
There have been genuine, legitimate fears on both sides and I hope that they will be put aside and that the plans the Federal Government have announced will be accepted by Colonel Ojukwu. I hope that there will be full co-operation

and that no side will seek to take military advantage, because this has been the real problem.
I hope that the Foreign Secretary will accept the suggestion which has been made that a motion should be tabled at the Security Council.
This war ceased to be just a civil war some time ago. We should have illusions if we thought it was. This war is being fought by arms supplied from outside Nigeria. If the combatants relied upon their own arms it would be a very small war indeed. There would be none of the bombing and casualties. We have supplied arms. I will not argue about the history of this. My own view is that one of the great disadvantages of the fact that we supply arms to one side is that we are inhibited from acting as we should be acting, as mediators in this dispute.
I should like to see a Minister visit Biafra. Why not? I am not sure that he would be welcome now. This is something over which we should ponder. An intervention of this kind in civil war, where we are friends to one side and regarded as enemies by the other, inhibits us from acting as a mediator. We ought, as the centre of the Commonwealth, be a mediator, but we cannot because it will not be accepted.
When the civil war broke out there was no legitimate democratically-elected Government, either in Nigeria or Biafra, but military régimes, coups d'etat, revolutions. Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania have been cited. They are democratically-elected Governments chosen by the people, where sections of the Army were proposing to strike against the legitimate Government. That has not always been the view of this House. I remember a time when another legitimate Government, elected by the people, 30 years ago, was attacked from outside, and the party opposite adopted a policy of non-intervention.

Mr. James Thin: On the point about our supply of arms to the Federal Government inhibiting our action as a mediator, would my right hon. Friend not agree that if we were to go back on a long-standing agreement to supply these arms we would compromise our position with the Federal Government as a mediator without support?

Mr. Griffiths: My own view, and I hold this very strongly, is that when the legitimate Government of Nigeria were overthrown by sections of the Army there ceased to be any legitimate, democratically-elected Government in Nigeria.

Mrs. Winifred Ewing: Would the right hon. Gentleman give some support to a proposition of mine that an all-party delegation of women M.P.s should visit both sides?

Mr. Griffiths: I want to devote myself to the future, to what happens from now on.
All bombing in war becomes indiscriminate. It is particularly indiscriminate in Biafra, as I found from my own experience and as my hon. Friends have found. There are Russian Ilyushin and MiG planes, and Egyptian pilots, and now, I am told, there are also mercenary European pilots flying Russian planes. I am not a militarist, but most of the bombing in market places, roads and towns is by awful anti-personnel bombs.
Biafra is an ever-shrinking territory, crowded with 8 to 10 million people. Millions of them are homeless and many are starving. Those who have been to Biafra know the scenes. The roads, the markets and the villages are crowded. I have seen the bombing there and, inevitably, there has been a heavy loss of life.
Some of my hon. Friends have been there quite recently and have seen the escalated bombing of the last weeks, which has incurred heavy casualties. There is a pattern to it. It is quite clear from what I saw, or the evidence of bombing where people have been killed, that bombs fall near big buildings. Bombing is pinpointed by the pilots, saying, "Find a big building and drop a bomb near to it". So, one sees evidence of bombing of villages close to a church, a hospital, or a convent.
I went to a convent in Nuguru. There, a bomb had fallen on the edge of the building and the sick bay had been hit. Children were killed. I saw a church on the road to Umuahia, and the little villages round the church, almost like countryside villages in this country. Bombs had fallen there, too.
We talk about discrimination in bombing. There can be no discriminatory

bombing in a place like Biafra, in which there are so many people roaming about. Stop it altogether; that is the only thing to do. [HON. MEMBERS: "How?"] I will come to that. The United Nations should have stepped in. The three countries which are maintaining supplies of arms in the civil war are all members of the Security Council: Russia and Britain to Nigeria, and France, directly or indirectly, to Biafra.
There is something else which I hope the United Nations will note. Lord Brockway and I saw arms in Nigeria which had been manufactured in eight European countries. They were supplied not by Russia, Britain or France, but from the black market, financed and organised from Europe. As a continent, we should be ashamed of it. This matter has been raised in the Council of Europe. I hope that it will be raised in the United Nations and that it will be said that this was is in danger of escalating into a conflict between the Great Powers. It is a threat to the peace of the world if it continues.

Mr. James Johnson: My right hon. Friend has just said that this matter has been raised at Strasbourg. That is so. But is it not a fact that in New York U Thant has said—and I accept what he says—that it was not within the purview of the United Nations?

Mr. Griffiths: I accept the view of the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire that the motion which we have tabled should go on the agenda of the Security Council. If anyone vetoes it, let it be vetoed. At least let us take a step towards an arms embargo and attempt to bring peace to Nigeria.
Lord Brockway and I proposed—and I still think that this is worth considering; we hope that it will be accepted—first, that there should be a cease-fire at once; secondly, that there should be a peace-keeping force; and, thirdly, that during that period there should be massive aid for the ports, rivers and roads which are essential for carrying supplies to the remote villages in Biafra. Then there should be a fairly long cooling-off period so that the bitter memories may begin to die and the hatreds grow less before there is talk about the future of Nigeria.
The first and most important thing is a cease-fire. We must stop the war. Colonel Ojukwu has said, "I am willing to have a cease-fire without raising the question of secession and Biafran sovereignty". General Gowon has said the same. But the two sides must come together. Part of the tragedy of the visit of my noble Friend and myself was to see people on both sides whom we knew in former days, old colleagues who had fought for the independence of Nigeria, who were now bitter enemies. There are experienced men on both sides outside these two young generals who realise that if the war goes on to an end it will be the finish of one Nigeria and that it may have serious repercussions all over Africa.
It may be sentimental and emotional to say so, but I fear the final stages of the war. I have seen the crowded villages and roads of Biafra, with its children being fed at six o'clock in the morning because it is essential to get them home by half-past seven before the bombing starts, with the markets opening at half-past five and closing at half-past seven so that the people can be dispersed. We have had illusions about the war going on to its bitter end. Do not let us have any more.
Some of the miscalculations of my right hon. Friend's advisers have proved disastrous in the past. When the civil war began, the advice was that it was a bush fire which would be extinguished in a couple of weeks. It has lasted 20 months. It was said, "If we can get rid of this man Ojukwu everything will be all right." That is a colossal mistake. No one who has been to Biafra believes that. It was suggested that there would be a quick kill. But it will be a long kill—and what a kill!
I do not say this light-heartedly, but, realising what the final stages of the war may be like, I cannot vote for the continued supply of arms to Nigeria. If we continue to supply arms to Nigeria, we shall be partly responsible for the final stages of the war. It may be sentiment, call it hypocrisy or what one likes. I speak only for myself: I cannot stand for it.

4.55 p.m.

Mr. Jeremy Thorpe: On this issue, there is no right hon. Gentleman whom I regard it as a greater privilege to follow than the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. James Griffiths). If I may respectfully say so, I think that the mission of himself and his noble Friend, Lord Brockway, cannot have failed to have moved all of us in the House. It showed that if they were perhaps of a more advanced age than some of us they were still very youthful in spirit. The compassion and humanity which they have both shown over the years, particularly in their record in different parts of the Commonwealth, were richly underpinned by their visit. It is, therefore, a privilege to follow the right hon. Gentleman in the debate.
The House is, I am sure, grateful for this opportunity to discuss the affairs of Biafra. I pay tribute to the Leader of the House, who must have reported to his colleagues with some success the intensity of feeling on both sides of the House which has resulted in this debate.
I do not want to inflame passions, because I believe that there are many factors which are common to every hon. and right hon. Gentleman, whether he agrees or disagrees with the Government's policy. I accept the sincerity of every hon. and right hon. Gentleman. We are all united in wishing to see the end of a ghastly war which has gone on between two military régimes for nearly two years and in which 1 million people have died—more, I believe, than in the whole of the Vietnam war. We want to stop the killing and to see peace.
I agree that all peace initiatives so far have failed. The Commonwealth Secretariat mission of Mr. Arnold Smith, the Secretary-General, was followed by the talks in Kampala, by the secret talks in London, by the preliminary talks in Niger and, finally, by the talks in Addis Ababa. All of them failed. I hope that we can also agree that there is unlikely to be a military solution of this problem—at least, not a permanent settlement by military means—because even if a military solution were imposed the guerilla activity which would occur afterwards would ensure that there was no peace in that part of West Africa for many years.
When the first Federal attack was made on 7th July, 1967, I believe that it was the Government's view that there would be a quick kill. I am sure that that was the view of our High Commissioner. I regret to say that on these matters I am also sure that, for the most part, he has always been wrong.
I sympathise with those who want to see one Nigeria. I know Nigeria and the regions of Nigeria. But we must be very careful that, in our attempt to prevent fragmencation happening in the Continent of Africa, we do not at the same time try to perpetuate frontiers drawn by colonial Powers which might themselves now be totally irrelevant. The recognition of that was when, before independence, there was a referendum in part of what was then East Nigeria to decide whether a particular area wished to join the Cameroons or remain witthin Nigeria.
Although they were English speaking, they opted to join the French-speaking Republic of Cameroon. Although partition can produce some appalling results and although very often the economic and political arguments against partition are very strong, surely the lessons of India, of Ireland and of Central Africa itself indicate that it is the will of the people which must be taken into account.
I think that the House will also agree that it is not for Britain to try to impose a settlement. Therefore, I ask two questions: first, what should be the attitude of this House to the continued supply of arms to one side; and, secondly, what, if any, additional initiative can this country take?
I must confess that I was as delighted to listen to the references by the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home) about the need for this country to take the initiative in the United Nations to try to get an embargo on arms, as I was saddened and surprised by the lack of any reference to any initiative in this matter from the Under-Secretary of State, when he opened the debate. As a country which is actively supplying arms to one side, I should have thought that even in our own interests we would want to see whether there could be some form of international control. However, there was not a word in the hon. Gentleman's speech, and it was left to the Opposition Front Bench

for the first time to raise the matter in this debate.
I want to be fair to the Government in the matter of arms, if I can. Although I believe that our policy of supplying arms is profoundly wrong, I can sympathise with and see how the Government started to travel along this road. The desperately difficult fact remains that one can start to travel along the road of supplying arms in what are justifiable conditions, but one comes to the stage where the road changes direction, where the terrain is very different, and where that policy has to be reconsidered, right though it may have been initially but possibly wrong as it becomes subsequently.
I suggest that there is a complete difference between a rebellion and a civil war. It may be only a difference of degree, but it is in that difference of degree that there is all the difference of policy. We are saying that it does not matter whether this is a civil war or a rebellion, the arguments for the justification of the supply of arms are the same.
However, I want to ask the House this question. I did not like the régime of Presient Nkrumah, whom we recognised and to whom, before his overthrow, we supplied about £900,000 worth of arms a year. On 24th February, 1966, he was overthrown by a military coup, and the National Liberation Council took over control of the Government. Although I do not hold any great brief for them, they are a distinct improvement upon the Nkrumah régime.
But, supposing there had been a transitional stage of six to nine months while these matters were in doubt, and there was fighting, would we say, on the basis of the Nigerian precedent, that it would have been our duty to a friendly Commonwealth country to have supplied President Nkrumah with the necessary arms to put down a rebellion? Would we have thought it our duty to take a political stand of that sort in defence of the status quo? That is the logic of the Government's argument.
It is one thing to put down a rebellion, but when the situation is reached that the whole future of a Government is being challenged by conditions of civil war, then to provide arms to one side is taking a clear and unequivocal side in a civil


war and, whether it is a Commonwealth or a foreign country, that should not be an aspect lightly accepted as part of our foreign or Commonwealth relations policy.

Mr. Frank Hooley: Is not the logic of the right hon. Gentleman's argument that, any time that the Government of a country is menaced by internal uprising, it is the duty of those external to the country to deny support to that Government?

Mr. Thorpe: I said nothing like that, and I am sorry if I led the hon. Gentleman to that different conclusion.
What I have said is that in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania there exist established Governments returned by the free will of the electorate. They were faced with rebellion, and initially we supported them in putting down that rebellion. I had doubts, but I can see the logic of the case. However, if in those countries the rebellion had turned into civil war, if, for example, in Kenya the Kikuyu were fighting the Masai and the Luos and there was civil war cutting the country in half and threatening the whole future of the country, could we continue to give support and become embroiled in civil war? It is a difference of degree, but it is a difference which should lead one to a different policy, and I do not believe that it is our job in the world to take part in civil wars.
Initially, that was the view of the Government. Before the outbreak of the war, the noble Lord, Lord Walston, made it plain in another place that we should be neutral and there was to be no intervention. On 25th January, 1968, the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, in another place, again said that we should be neutral to both sides, neither helping one side nor the other. That was the Government's initial position, and it was a proper one.
By 13th February, 1968, the same noble Lord said that if we were to stop supplying arms to one side, Lagos would interpret that as being un-neutral. So we arrived at the situation where the former Commonwealth Secretary said on 21st May, 1968, that those who were suggesting a cut-back in arms would be asking us to do something which was tantamount to supporting a rebellion. By

12th June, when eventually facts were got out, the Government's position was that we were a traditional supplier, and supplies must continue. They took the view that this was the legal Government and that arms would be bought elsewhere, whereas our arms supplies gave us some influence which otherwise we would not have. I think that that is a fair summary of the Government's attitude.
Before the military coup d'etat, the amount of military aid that we were giving was not very great. Certainly, it was a very small percentage of what we were giving to Ghana. The build-up came before the secession but after the Federal coup d'etat, and, therefore, it is on the basis of the increased supply of arms that we are now saying that we supply only 15 per cent. of their requirements.
The Prime Minister went further when I questioned him on 16th May, He said:
… we have allowed the continuance of supply of arms by private manufacturers in this country exactly on the basis that it has been in the past, but there has been no special provision for the needs of the war."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th May, 1968; Vol. 764, c. 1397–8.]
All I can say is that the only difference is that before the war those bullets were not fired at fellow Nigerians and now they are.
I believe that we are entitled to ask the Government, "Very well. If you are to continue to supply arms, and you tell us that it gives you a particular influence, where has it been successful?" It did not succeed in getting General Gowon to Addis Ababa where there could have been a meeting between the two combatants. It has not succeeded in preventing the strafing of the civilial population by Federal bombers. There is no doubt about that issue now.
So what have we achieved? We have a situation, as the right hon. Member for Llanelly pointed out, in which we are bringing into this area all the pressures of the cold war. We are seeing a conflict between France and Russia—and indeed ourselves. We are seeing a clash between European Powers as well. We are certainly finding ourselves at variance with the views of our European allies. That is why the British Week was cancelled in Switzerland. That is why there have been posters up in


Berlin saying "U.S.S.R. and G.B. Volkmord", which means genocide—[Interruption.] It may not be right. But I refer the House to President Nixon's campaign speeches on the great danger of two narrow a definition of what is meant by genocide. We are seeing at the moment——

Mr. James Johnson: rose—

Mr. Edwin Brooks: rose—

Mr. Thorpe: I will give way in a moment. I do not believe that the Federal authorities have the remotest intention of committing genocide. I do not think that anyone in this House would suggest it. But I suggest that there are conditions in which we can see, through starvation, through the continuation of bombing and through the strafing of the civilian population, a very large proportion of a particular race being wiped out.

Mr. James Johnson: Many Nigerians believe that our influence has perhaps been too successful in that it has deterred General Gowon and his advisers from pushing on with what we might term a successful conclusion. Indeed, fighting commanders like Adekunle at Port Har-court have been held back in the field. This is a negative factor, but has the right hon. Gentleman thought about it?

Mr. Thorpe: I do not know whether that is the hon. Gentleman's view. If his view is that because we have supplied arms we therefore have an influence with the Federal authorities which has prevented genocide, then he has a very low opinion of those to whom we are currently supplying arms.

Mr. Michael Foot: The right hon. Gentleman says that nobody in this House is making any accusation of genocide. Therefore, I do not think that we need pursue that. But does he agree that the Government's influence may have had some effect in securing the presence of international observers in Nigeria, which surely, on the report of Sir Bernard Fergusson, has assisted in preventing a certain amount of killing? Perhaps I may put the question that the right hon. Gentleman put the other way round. Many of us believe that the way to get peace is to get a cease-fire, to stop the bombing and to get an international force, if possible. Surely our influence

can best be used with the Nigerian Government to secure that. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the preliminary announcement that we were cutting off all arms supplies would assist in securing those purposes? I should like his answer, because this is one of the most difficult questions that we have to decide.

Mr. Thorpe: The hon. Gentleman puts a very fair question. Whatever action is taken, I think that it is extremely difficult. It is a very high price to pay to supply arms to one side if the only dividend at the end is that we happen to get in some international observers.
I should like to draw another comparison with which the hon. Gentleman will be familiar. At the time of the Indo-Chinese war this country was neutral. We were not involved. We were not associating with the French at the time of Dien Bien Phu. We were neutral, and so regarded. Therefore, this country, to its great credit, played a major part in bringing about the Geneva talks which brought that war to an end.
But looking at Vietnam today, because this country has associated itself so clearly and indelibly with one side, we are in no position to negotiate or to be a mediator. Indeed, when that very distinguished public servant, Lord Hunt, went to Nigeria on a mercy mission—1 do not say the Biafrans were right—he was not able to gain access to Biafra because he belonged to a country which was regarded as being exclusively associated with one side.
We are in the realm of conjecture. If we were in the position of not having supplied arms to either side, I believe that we would have been in a stronger position today. If we had said, with all the unpopularity which it would have prompted from the Federal Government, "There is a condition of civil war. We believe that our job is to act as mediators. We do not want it to be thought that we are taking sides. Our job is to get peace." I suggest that our chances of getting an international observer force, and possibly our chances of taking the initiative at the United Nations, as we did successfully in the Security Council after the six-day war, because we had genuinely tried to understand both points of view, would have been much better


and we would have been in a stronger position today.
But there is another reason. I believe that the Government's maintenance of the supply of arms to Nigeria would be far more convincing if they could come to this House and say, "We have taken every initiative to get an international embargo. We have raised it at the United Nations, we have raised it with the Commonwealth and we have raised it in W.E.U." But no such move has been publicly made and at no stage have the Government told the House that that is what they will do. I hope that the Foreign Secretary will tell us what he has in mind.
I believe that the supply of arms, for that reason alone, becomes even more cynical. It has not achieved the quick kill. It has not—and here I disagree with the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot)—given us this great influence, unless all that we have done is to prevent a holocaust occurring. That seems to me to be an even more important reason for getting international control.

Mr. Michael Foot: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether he thinks it is important to have had international observers who have gone through the areas liberated or taken into the Nigerian field from the Biafrans? Does he not think that it is important in saving lives that we should have had international observers there? However strongly the right hon. Gentleman may hold his views, does he not think it is right that he should acknowledge the importance of that matter, because it is as important to save lives on that side of the line as on the other side of the line?

Mr. Thorpe: Of course it is important. It is important, as the Minister has said, that we are to give aid—that we are granting money and supplies. These things are invaluable. I am merely saying that it is a pretty odd equation for the hon. Gentleman to say that we can take the credit for having played some part in getting international observers in because we had influence with the Nigerians since we supplied arms. If that argument is taken to its logical conclusion, there will be some pretty crummy régimes in Western Europe to whom we should supply arms in order

to have official observers going into General Franco's jails.

Mr. Michael Foot: I said that because the right hon. Gentleman said that we had no influence. I was pointing out that we have had some influence in saving lives. I wish to see our influence used further to save more lives by getting a cease fire. I do not believe that the course that the right hon. Gentleman recommends will assist us in that purpose.

Mr. Thorpe: That is a matter of opinion. I believe that what is past is past. But had we not supplied arms our influence would have been very much greater in saving many more lives. As it is, we can claim to have produced about 80 per cent. of the killing power on the ground, as the Minister rightly said, "This is a war on the ground". I want to see the Government in a position to take some initiative. I face the fact that if we stop the supply of arms tomorrow we would not have very much more initiative, because I think we are committed to the hilt, and to me it is tragic that this country is not trusted by one side or the other.
When the right hon. Gentleman asks, "What do we achieve by giving up the supply of arms?", are we washing our hands as Pontius Pilate did? I do not think that we are. I do not think that it is any part of the foreign policy of this country, in its own interests, to be the supplier of arms in a civil war. I think that it is morally wrong that we should do so, and to say that if we do not somebody else will is the argument of the prostitute, of the dope pedlar and of the black marketeer through the centuries. I would be more convinced with the case for the supply of arms by this Government if they had taken some initiative to try to get some international negotiations going at the Security Council.
We are in the almost impossible position that Umiaha will not surrender any of its sovereignty to Lagos, and that Lagos in turn will not agree to any settlement in which Umiaha does not come under its suzerainty. The nearest equivalent was that of Cyprus, where the people of Cyprus were given independence, and the President of Cyprus promptly recognised the Queen as the Queen of Cyprus. There was a constitutional formula which worked.
I believe that probably the only political settlement will be one rather along the lines of Malaysia. I think that we shall have to see a completely new Nigeria, a Commonwealth of Nigeria. It may well be that it will have to start with a new Nigerian flag, and that each of the consituent states of Nigeria will have its own national flag, but it will be part of the Nigerian Commonwealth, with a rotating head of State as we have in Malaysia at the moment. This is one of the ways in which the different and competing ethnic groups and nations have managed to have some confidence, but we are in the position that the only legal constitution, certainly in the courts, will be the lour region constitution which was in operation before the coup d'etat of General Gowon and General Ironsi.
I do not think that this is something that we can do. I think that this will have to come from the United Nations, or from the O.A.U., or from the Commonwealth as a whole. Unfortunately, I think that we are too tainted. I hope that the Government will not think that they are taking useful initiatives by sending—[Interruption.] This is a serious problem. Malaysia had precisely the same problem, and precisely the same possibility of civil war between individual states. That is one reason why it was difficult to negotiate an independent settlement, but it has worked.
I believe that the Government must not think that they are taking an initiative by sending out missions, however distinguished, to one part of Nigeria to bring back reports. I do not query the faith of the Prime Minister in this matter, but it is extraordinary how many missions have been dispatched at hours' notice the day before difficult debates. We have seen it in Rhodesia. We have seen it in Vietnam, and we have seen it now in Nigeria.
But even if I accept that every one of those initiatives has nothing to do with any tactical consideration—[An HON. MEMBER: "Do you oppose these Missions being sent?"]—in the case of the right hon. Gentleman going to Salisbury on certain occasions, my view is that he should not have gone because it was far too humiliating for this country. Even if these initiatives can bring back new information, because the Government are committed to their support of

one side in a civil war our initiatives will not be very great. All I hope is that we shall be able to say that at least we have some honour left, and that we have stopped trafficking in blood. For that reason I believe that it would be right tonight for the House to have an opportunity to express its views in the Lobby.

5.25 p.m.

Mr. Woodrow Wyatt: I am glad that we are having this debate on Biafra and Nigeria, because it will give the Government a chance to clear up some of the misconceptions which have been very much at large in this country and are still at large in this House. I am looking forward to hearing one of those robust, forthright, lucid expositions from the Foreign Secretary in which he firmly attaches himself to his own policy and explains why it is necessary not only in the interests of Nigeria but in the interests of this country, something which we seldom hear about.
Much of the misunderstanding is due to reporting on B.B.C. and Independent Television. It is because they have elected all the time to produce the sensational elements of the bombing, which is horrible in any aspect, and they have neglected to point out the other aspects of the situation, for example the great work of rehabilitation that has been going on in the areas recaptured by the Federal Government. They have not found it news to give shots and descriptions of pacified areas where people are quietly going about their work. They have not interviewed the 20,000 Ibos in Lagos who are still happily employed without any persecution. They have selected only those horrifying incidents which must always be connected with war.
Lately The Times, in an attempt to increase its circulation in a very cheap way, has prominently displayed, in far larger terms than it has ever done before with a writer in The Times, the name of the author. The first was put on the front page, and all these articles have concentrated on the sensational aspects of the horrors of war at the receiving end, which all of us who have ever been in a war know must always occur.

Mr. David Winnick: The reports are true.

Mr. Wyatt: I did not say they were not, but they are only partially true


because they do not give the other side of the picture, and that is most important.
The country has been given the impression that when the British Government are not actively engaged in bombing Biafran children they are engaged in starving them. A more ludicrous travesty of the facts could hardly be imagined.
In the first place, we have not even supplied them with any bombers, or pilots, or bombs. Secondly, there is not such tremendous pattern bombing in Biafra because the Nigerian Government have fewer than six bombers. Even if they missed a military target every time they bombed they could not be bombing on the scale that we bombed Dresden. Who are we to tell the Federal Government of Nigeria that they have no business to drop bombs in case any of them should hit a civilian? Was not it out side which used the atom bomb on Hiroshima? Nothing more disgusts our potential friends in Nigeria and Africa than our hypocritical, nauseating, sanctimonious approach, as though we, the Europeans and the British, have lily-white hands and apparently fight wars only with bows and arrows while they, because they are Africans, know no better.
If it it true that the bombs frequently miss military targets—and I am prepared to believe it—whose fault is that? It is because we refused to allow them to have British trained bomber pilots. We refused to train their pilots, and it is no good saying, "Well, they have Egyptian pilots there." I would much rather they had Israeli pilots, because they would be more likely to hit the right targets.
What is forgotten in the propaganda which is flooding this country is that it was the Ibos who began the whole thing. First, they murdered the Federal Prime Minister. They murdered the Prime Ministers of two of the other regions. They murdered the Finance Minister, and later they started the actual fighting, even though the Federal Government had gone on being immensely patient and paying the salaries of dissident officials in the Ibo areas.—[An HON. MEMBER: "Who told the hon. Gentleman that?"] The facts are there. The trouble is that nobody wants to know.
Before General Gowon began the war—[Laughter.]—sorry, before Colonel

Ojukwu—[Laughter.] I do not know why the war in Nigeria is such a laughing matter. I thought that those who are laughing affected to be so tragically moved by it. When Colonel Ojukwu started the war he said, "This is going to be an all-out war, a total war, in which no quarter will be given". He immediately started bombing Lagos. If he had the bombers he would be bombing civilian targets right now. On 31st January last, as the Under-Secretary has said, indiscriminate bombing by Biafrans took place of a village called Obaje in which civilians were killed and there was no pretence of any military target in the place.
We are talking about the complaint of one side that they have not got the bombers to do to the other side what they began doing themselves. Everyone who has bothered to study the matter knows that in those areas which the Ibos and Biafrans overran to begin with they committed untold atrocities. There were piles of corpses of non-Ibos outside every cemetery. There were most horrible murders, but, apparently, because they were done by the rebels, this does not matter. None of my hon. Friends who make such a commotion now bothered to take that up, any more than they agitate about the rocket firing by the Vietcong on civilians in South Vietnam, which is far worse than anything that General Gowon can do and is killing far more people—[Interruption.] Obviously, the British Government and everyone in this House do not want to see bombing of civilians or children in Biafra. The whole time, the Government have been using their influence to try to ensure that this is prevented or, when military targets are attacked, cut to the absolute minimum. I respect them for that, and I think they have done their best.
One of the answers to the right hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe), who seemed singularly misinformed on the whole subject, is that, of course, the British influence has helped to maintain throughout the highest conceivable standards in the Federal Government areas. Because of the public opinion effect of the British Government, I am sure that more care has been taken than would otherwise have been taken. Anyone who reads General Gowon's instructions to the pilots can see that he does not intend that there


should be indiscriminate bombing. Indeed, he speaks movingly of the need to maintain one Nigeria and not put one Nigerian against another, and, therefore, he says again and again, "Do everything you can to avoid civilian targets", but he cannot fly every plane himself.
Threatening to stop the supply of arms is useless, because the first thing that would happen is that they would go straight to the Russians for them. It will do no one any good in Nigeria——

Mr. James Griffiths: My hon. Friend says that, if we stopped the supply, they would go to the Russians. But the Russians are there already.

Mr. Wyatt: But my right hon. Friend fails to notice that, whereas we also have influence in Nigeria, along with the Russians, today, in the case that he puts, only the Russians would have influence, and that is not a situation which I want.
The Russians have already told the Federal Government that, come what may, they will see them through to victory, and it does not matter how many Resolutions are passed at the United Nations and how many Motions are put on the Order Paper of the House of Commons, the realpolitik of the situation is that the Russians have said, "If the British let you down, we will see that you finish the rebellion."
Why should we cut off the arms in any case? They are the legitimate Government. Surely they have a right to defend the integrity of their country against internal rebellion—[Interruption.] They are just as legitimate as many of the Governments which many of my hon. Friends support in Eastern Europe, if not more so——

Mr. Philip Noel-Baker: Could my hon. Friend tell us who gave Colonel Gowon his constitutional mandate to assume power, after the murder of General Ironsi?

Mr. Wyatt: I can tell my right hon. Friend this much. At the conference in Ghana, it was agreed by Colonel Ojukwu that General Gowon should be the head of the Federal Government of Nigeria—[An HON. MEMBERS: "No."] It certainly was, and in a situation which has been a series of miltary coups, begun by the Ibos and Colonel Ojukwu himself, it does not lie in his mouth to criticise or

query the legitimacy of General Gowon or in that of any of his friends. In fact, many of Colonel Ojukwu's friends do him much disservice in this House and elsewhere.
Of course the Federal Government are entitled to go on getting arms from us. They have to put down a rebellion which is affecting only a comparatively small part of that vast country. At the moment, I suppose there may be 5 million people in the area held by Biafra, but there are nearly 60 million in Nigeria, and the rest of them are working peacefully and hoping for this miserable war to be brought to the quickest possible end. They want to go on building a united country.
To that end, a new constitution has been promulgated, about which we have heard nothing this afternoon and in which there are to be 12 states, and about which no doubt the Ibo leaders may complain, because it confines them to East Central State in which their boundaries would match their majority areas. This, of course, would mean that they would have no access to the sea. The fact that Port Harcourt happens to have a majority of Ibos in it does not make the whole of the Rivers area an Ibo area. There is 50 or 100 miles of entirely non-Iboland after Port Harcourt before one reaches the East Central State——

Mr. James Johnson: Is it not a fact that there are twelve States in being, or eleven plus what is now East Central or Iboland, each of which has its capital city—civil servants have left Kaduna in the North and Lagos—and those cities are functioning as provincial capitals at the moment?

Mr. Wyatt: I am grateful. My hon. Friend, with his considerable knowledge and great experience of Nigeria, has underlined what is happening. All those people who keep saying, "Stop supplying arms to the Nigerian Government," are trying to keep alive a rebellion which is not only dying but which should die——

Mr. Roy Roebuck: I take my hon. Friend's point about the legality and morality of supplying arms to the Federal Government, but would he not also agree that those who supply


arms to the rebels are acting both illegally and immorally?

Mr. Wyatt: Of course; I ws coming to that. I absolutely agree. The Federal Government continually offer Colonel Ojukwu fair and reasonable terms, including an amnesty for himself and a reinstatement even of Ibo soldiers in the Federal army. Nothing could be more reasonable and fair, if anyone bothered to read them, than the terms issued by the Federal Government to end this war. But, of course, Colonel Ojukwu will not give in, because he wants the idea of an independent nation accepted before he will start talks. Of course the Federal Government cannot agree to that, any more than Abraham Lincoln could agree to the secession of the Southern States in the American Civil War——

Mr. James Griffiths: It is all right to go over the whole history, but there was a settlement at Abori which Colonel Ojukwu repudiated after he had signed.

Mr. Wyatt: But he did not. That was repudiated by both sides. And one of the main features of the agreement was that General Gowon should be head of the State, so I do not know why everybody says that his is not the legitimate Government.
To say that we should pressurise the Nigerian Government into agreeing to a cease-fire and that then talks should be held is utterly wrong. It is taking one side, because it means, first, that the validity of the rebellion is recognised, together with the claim for separate nationhood, and, second, it merely gives the rebel areas the chance to rebuild and recoup their forces, and, of course, they are getting plenty of arms from General de Gaulle. It is not reasonable to say that a ceasefire in advance of talks would be fair to both sides, because it would be absolutely hostile to the Federal Government of Nigeria.
Reference has been made to the failure to acquire what is called a quick kill. The argument appears to be that as the civil war was not finished immediately, it should be prolonged indefinitely. If we and everyone else stopped supplying arms to the Federal Government the Biafrans would continue to get arms from General de Gaulle and the war would drag on for

ever. Civil wars and rebellions of this kind tend to last a long time. That is the sad thing about them. The American Civil War lasted for four years; but nobody says that Abraham Lincoln was unreasonable in saying that the rebellion must come to an end before talk about terms could occur.
Pressure should not be put on the Federal Government to agree to all sorts of arrangements which would break up the unity of Nigeria because that, in any event, is the hope of Africa. There are 2,000 tribes in Africa and if we were to start embarking on the sort of policies that some have put forward, goodness knows what would happen. Are we to abandon all our ideals and hopes for Africa. If so, we cannot imagine what would be the result. That is why I am amazed at some of the extraordinary attitudes which some people adopt over this question.
Pressure should be brought to bear on Colonel Ojukwu to agree to what must be regarded as the very reasonable terms that have been put forward. He is one of the most unreasonable men in history. [HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish."] He almost got himself to the gateway of Lagos, and at that time he was definitely not speaking in friendly terms to the non-Ibos. He set up a puppet republic in Benin. I suppose it was meant to be his kind of Czechoslovakia. He treated the people of Calabar and the Rivers area in such a terrible way that they have been immensely pleased to get rid of him. Even the Ibos of the mid-western areas no longer want to have anything to do with him. It was only because of what he claimed the Federal Government would do to them that so many Ibos and non-Ibos were persuaded to track back into Biafran territory with him.
In this case not only is right on the side of the Federal Government of Nigeria, but it is also on the side of Her Majesty's Government. It so happens that this Tightness coincides with our interests. "British interests" has become a dirty phrase, but I am not ashamed of using it. It so happens that in Nigeria, outside the rebel area, live 16,000 British citizens, and they are at work there this very day. We have investments in Nigeria worth at least £400 million, and the oil in Nigeria will have a value richer than even that of Kuwait.


In the end, British investment there will be worth about £2.000 million.
I would not even consider mentioning these interests if I believed that Her Majesty's Government were in the wrong. If I believed that we should stop sending arms to the Federal Government of Nigeria, then no consideration of our personal interests would interfere with the situation. But to change sides on the wrong side and, in so doing, totally wreck the interests of our country seems to be the politics of utter lunacy. We are right. Why, therefore, should we change to the wrong side?

Mr. Simon Mahon: It is about time my hon. Friend changed sides.

Mr. Wyatt: If we were to change to the wrong side the Russians would be only too delighted to take over our oil interests and our other interests in Nigeria. In that event our influence for democracy and fair dealing throughout the Continent of Africa would disappear.
If I have a criticism of Her Majesty's Government it is that they have been too lukewarm in their support of the Federal Government.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: If the hon. Gentleman had confined his argument to the last economic one, his remarks would have been more impressive. The Government changed their mind when our oil supplies were stopped because of the Israeli war.

Mr. Wyatt: I cannot hope to make as good a speech as the hon. Gentleman. I am just doing my bit to state the facts as I have seen them.
As I was saying, if the Government had been less lukewarm in their support of the Nigerian Federal Government the theory of the quick kill might rapidly have become a reality. As it was, they waited until after General de Gaulle decided last July, when the rebellion was nearly over, to send the rebels large supplies of arms, and, of course, money. After all, where do people think all the cash that is necessary for the Biafran propaganda machine is coming from? It is coming from Paris, although after recent events in France General de Gaulle may have to curtail this supply.
Nothing was more cynical than the intervention of General de Gaulle on the side of the Biafran rebels, first, in an effort to get hold of some oil in Nigeria if he possibly could, and, secondly, to follow his usual obsession with the British. Anything that he can do to harm, damage or maltreat the British he will do. If the British can be harmed as a result of French action in any matter, that is where General de Gaulle will be found.
Not only have we been too lukewarm in supporting the Federal Government, but we have been interfering too much in our insistence on the manner in which they should conduct the war. We are, of course, talking about an independent country. We are not running Nigeria How should we feel if a similar debate were taking place in a Nigerian Parliament about the way in which, for example, the Home Secretary treats Welsh Nationalists? We should regard it as the greatest impertinence.
We have been overstepping the bounds of good manners in our treatment of General Gowon and the Federal Government. They have been doing their best to conform to British standards, and I believe that they are sincere in their desire to see a peaceful Nigeria in which all Nigerians have the same rights and privileges. What some of my enthusiastic hon. Friends do not realise is that although they are great levellers, the Ibos are not. They want to dominate Nigeria.
It is our duty to support the legitimate Government of that country, and I hope that the Foreign Secretary will say that he does not intend to take the slightest notice of all this ill-informed clamour.

5.48 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Fraser: I am sure that the Foreign Secretary is familiar with the old Sicilian phrase, "God protect me from my friends". Although he appears to have only one friend today, his prayers must nevertheless be fervent.
Many hon. Members regret that the Foreign Secretary did not open the debate, since we are waiting to see whether there is to be a change of Government policy in this matter. There are unconfirmed rumours that the Prime Minister is about to fly to Lagos. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm or deny those rumours?
Many hon. Members wish to take part in the debate, and as their activities have forced the Government into having this discussion, I will be brief.
During the last 18 months we have seen a growing failure of British policy, and this must have alarmed hon. Members. We have seen the quick kill failing. We have seen that the unitary State in Nigeria is no longer achievable except at costs which would be unacceptable to the civilised world. We have seen that a military solution is no longer acceptable or possible and that, therefore, there must be a political solution.
It is difficult to achieve a political solution, but I believe that towards that purpose there must be a change of British, European and Russian policy. That change can best be triggered off by an unequivocal cessation of British arms supply to Lagos. That is my theme, and I wish to develop it. I wish to say something about the failure of our policy. What did we set out to do in major policy? I suggest it was to press for a unitary State in Nigeria. It is quite clear from evidence now to hand that the British High Commission in Lagos, after General Gowon had signed the Aburri Agreement, exerted maximum pressure through Permanent Under-Secretary Mr. Ayeda and Mr. Atta to renege on that agreement so that the idea of confederation was lost at that time.
This was the first and gravest possible error. It showed the first disastrous mis-appreciation of what is likely to happen in that part of the world. Secondly, as was pointed out by the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. James Griffiths) and others, we very quickly fell into the error of declaring what was in in fact a civil war a rebellion, with all the unfortunate results which followed from that.
We are now reaping the whirlwind of these follies and the legal fiction to which the right hon. Member referred in the bloody deadlock round Owerri and Abba and in air attacks on civilians. It is fair to say that without wiping out 7 million people the military policy of a unitary State is as dead as its million victims. That is a fact which this House has to face. That is the main objective of our policy. The main objective of a unitary State has quite clearly failed.
I turn to what the subsidiary objectives of British policy have been. These are perfectly respectable, perfectly proper objectives. First, they were to keep out of Nigeria elements which might have been hostile to our interests—the Russians and the French; second, to get the oil flowing; third, to protect our other interests; fourth, to relieve starvation; and, fifth, prevent the atrocities of war. On none of these subsidiary objectives of policy can we be shown to have had any success whatever with the Russian Fleet in Lagos, with the French becoming more important in Biafra. With atrocities which naturally follow, as the hon. Member for Bosworth (Mr. Wyatt) admitted must happen in war, we see in the major parts of policy and all other parts of policy, failure.
If this present policy continues things will not get better; there will be a fairly sharp deterioration. If it continues the British policy of striving for a unitary Nigerian State we shall be heading for a situation which will combine many of the features of the Congo in the 'sixties with those of Vietnam. We are in great danger of creating a situation around Biafra not dissimilar to the horrors of the Congo in an earlier period. We are in great danger, if this policy should continue, of creating in Lagos a sort of Saigon where puppet régime succeeds puppet régime and where influence of Powers outside becomes more and more important. While the cost of war mounts——

Mr. John Fraser: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hugh Fraser: I shall not give way. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] Because it takes so long to put a case if there are so many interruptions.
While unwilling soldiers are sent to the front and taxation goes up, the Northern Region, at this moment unconsulted, broods and the Western Region and Middle States begin to repine and plot against the régime. If this policy is pursued it will head straight for the destruction of any chance of any form of unity in Nigeria. This is the policy on which we are embarked.
To press on with this sort of policy is the final madness of a post-colonial stage when somehow somewhere in Whitehall it is believed to be the duty to see that


the frontiers made by dead men of Potsdam, dead men of Whitehall, and dead men of the Quai d'Orsay should be protected for ever.
People talk about the problems of a policy east of Suez. If we are not careful we shall embark on a policy of maintaining thousands of frontiers south of the Sahara. This is a policy which is beyond distraction. One feels that King Lears are going about in the corridors of power. This must stop. We must see tonight a change of policy from that which is being pursued at the moment. This is why we regret very much that the Foreign Secretary has not spoken. We regret it because the policy which has to be put forward is one which means four things which are profoundly necessary to do all the others things such as supply of food and relief or commercial activities, which must be subsidiary.
First, there is the cessation of arms supply; secondly, an embargo on all arms supply; thirdly, a cease-fire; and, fourthly, negotiation, not between the Government and the rebels, but negotiation between two sides in a civil war. Unless this is undertaken there can be no peace. When so much is at stake and when other Powers are jockeying for position, it is essential that someone should take the first step. It is no use referring to the United Nations. It is no good referring to the Organisation for African Unity. Unless someone takes the first step there will be no move towards an arms embargo. I suggest in all seriousness that that first step must be the cessation of British arms supplies.
Of course there are arguments against this; there are most obvious arguments against it. There is the British population in the Federation area. But there is also the British population in Biafra. Are they to be massacred by Biafra because they regarded the Foreign Secretary as an angel of death?

Mr. John Tilney: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Hugh Fraser: No I am not giving way.
We have listened so far to the most unrealistic policy of all. There is the question of others stepping in. If it is a question of others stepping in, as the

Leader of the Liberal Party said, there is no moral argument about this but a political argument. This is a question of maintaining influence by arms, and the only way to do that would be, for every Ilyushin bomber, to give two other bombers and for every bomb to drop, three others. That argument falls to the ground. Such a unilateral move, perilous though it might seem, could achieve three things. It would put the Lagos Government into a position in which it could rely only on the Soviet Union for the supply of arms. This would be acceptable neither to them nor to us, nor to the United States of America. I believe that this is a bit of a myth. Russian penetration has failed again and again over Africa. What we are certain about is that the Powers of the West and their contacts and their hold on the Lagos Government would put this in an impossible position.
Next, I believe that if we were to take this step we could take this up forcefully with Europe—with France, Germany and other countries in which there is much stronger feeling about the Biafran situation than there is in this country—and insist that there should be a genuine embargo on all arms shipments. This could be policed and enforced.
Lastly, I believe that the shock of this gesture, which would move quickly into an arms embargo on all sides, would make it possible for those to arise, both on the Biafran and on the Federal Nigerian side, who believe in, who want, and who long for, peace, but who at the moment, because of the military régimes in both areas, cannot raise a voice. There are these people. I can give the names of such people. There are hundreds of leaders who at the moment are kept down.
I believe that it is this, difficult though it may be, that is the only great chance that lies before the Government. It means a change of policy—not change of gimmicks, not a question of individual men, but of measures. This policy as defined now can lead only to further escalation, to a further destruction of our interests and that stability in Nigeria which we wish to see. This has been a shameful episode not just against humanity but against every interest of Britain abroad.

6.2 p.m.

Mr. Frank Allaun: I shall speak briefly on two points—first, on what I am sure is the vital issue, a ceasefire; and, secondly, on what I saw myself in a visit to both Biafra and Nigeria at the invitation of both Governments and from which I returned last night, particularly about the bombing of civilians by Federal planes, which is, as I shall show, incontestable.
My wish is not for a victory by either side in this terrible war, but for its ending. There are rights and wrongs in the case presented both by Colonel Ojukwu and by Major-General Gowon. There is also intense bitterness on both sides. So the eventual negotiations will be prolonged. Meanwhile, the killing and starvation continue. So the key factor is an immediate cease-fire.
I put this question to Colonel Ojukwu when I met him for an hour last weekend. I have a tape-recording of the interview. Here is the relevant part. I asked him:
You made an important statement to the three Scandinavian leaders some time ago in which I understand you said that you would agree to an immediate ceasefire without preconditions. Is that correct? Is it still your position? Will you elaborate a little on it?
Colonel Ojukwu replied:
It is correct. It remains my position. I believe this war is futile. Lagos cannot win the war. We can continue our resistance for as long as the Nigerians wish to attack us, but to win total victory for either side is impossible. The past six months have shown that there is absolutely no reason to believe that the next months will change the situation in favour of one or the other. By accepting this fact that the war is futile, then, of course, the only way to get about achieving peace is around a table. That has been the position of the Biafran Government ever since the war began. We want to get round a table because weapons can never win this war. We cannot get round the table when there is bombing, where there is military activity all round, when in fact some of the delegates cannot get out and friends cannot consult. We would like to see a discussion in a comparatively peaceful atmosphere. So from the end of last year I kept repeating that ceasefire without conditions would be the answer to our problems.
Colonel Ojukwu continued:
What do I mean by ceasefire without preconditions? Lagos says that Nigeria is one and that it includes Biafra. Biafra says we are separate and not part of the Nigerian Federation. I suppose everybody has a right to certain beliefs. All I say is that Lagos

should not give up anything completely and we do not give up anything. Whatever emerges from our dialogue across the table shall probably have a better chance of finding a solution to this problem. What I ask for I accept for myself. What I offer Lagos I would accept—no more, no less.
When I got to Lagos I had talks with four members of the Federal Government. Their attitude on the ceasefire issue is this: "We want a ceasefire, too, on one condition, and only one condition, that Colonel Ojukwu agrees to one Nigeria, a united country". Otherwise, they said, it would mean that the Federal soldiers would have given their lives for nothing.
In my view, this means that the Federal Government are asking the Biafrans to give up their whole case, the issue over which the war is being fought. The Biafran leaders could equally well say that to accept this condition would mean that their own soldiers had given their lives in vain.
To summarise on this point, the Biafrans say—ceasefire, and then negotiations. The Federal Government say—negotiations, and then cease-fire. I am certain that the former approach is more likely to succeed.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: Did my hon. Friend, in asking Colonel Ojukwu these questions, go on to ask him what he was going to negotiate about? That is what I asked Colonel Ojukwu, and I got quite a different reply.

Mr. Allaun: Yes, I certainly did ask Colonel Ojukwu about that. I will come to it in a minute. In includes the question of plebiscite among the Rivers people. If right hon. and hon. Gentlemen want peace rather than victory for either side, as I believe they all do, this is what they should press the Government to urge on the two Governments.
I come now to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon). The most difficult of the subjects for negotiation is that of the fate of the Rivers people who were incorporated in Biafra and, now that Biafra's area has shrunk, are in the Federal area. I was told by many people in Lagos that overwhelmingly the Rivers State people would prefer to be as they now are. If so, then this minority within a minority are entitled to security. I think


that on this point the Federal Government have justice on their side.
However, may I point out that if a ceasefire or truce does take place it will take place on the present areas of control. The Rivers State would remain where it is during the talks—that is, in the Federal State. Moreover, the Biafran attitude is that it would agree to a plebiscite to decide which way these people wished to go. My own belief is that a neutral observer or police force would be required to ensure that neither side tool: advantage of the truce. I questioned the Biafran leader on this point. I ask the House to forgive me for again quoting, but I think it is of some importance. This was his reply:
I have already suggested that, in the event of a cease-fire, there would be need for a small force, an observer force, to ensure that there is no further outbreak, and not only that, but the force to be available at short notice so that if something went wrong it would be able to say whose fault it was. I will not go for a Commonwealth force; neither would I go for the O.A.U. I think in the present situation of the struggle, the more likely, the most likely, would be the U.N. force with certain guarantees and limitations. Il would be necessary for the forces of the two sides to be represented.
The British Government's attitude today, I regret to say—it has been expressed by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State who, I am sure, is sincere——

Mr. Roebuck: As sincere as my hon. Friend.

Mr. Allaun: I am not questioning that. The British Government's attitude today, I regret to say, can be summed up in two words, "No change". I am bitterly disappointed.

Mr. Evan Luard: Is my hon. Friend speaking of a temporary cease-fire or a permanent cease-fire in saying what he does? If he is talking of a permanent cease-fire, as appears from what he says about an observer force, is that not to concede the whole Biafran case?

Mr. Allaun: No. The immediate proposal is for a cease-fire, and during the cease-fire the talks could continue. I fear that the talks might be prolonged because of the difficulties between the two sides, but, so far as I am concerned, the longer the truce the better.
I entirely support the Motion tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster

(Mr. Henig) and signed by 159 right hon. and hon. Members. This is why it seems to me best to oppose the Government's Motion on the Adjournment at 10 o'clock tonight. For the British Government cannot consistently give arms to one side and then say that they are trying to achieve a ceasefire. Her Majesty's Government cannot bring effective pressure for a truce until they stop the arming of one side. Only if that step is taken will the rumoured visit by the Prime Minister to Lagos be of the slightest use. I want to see that visit not as a bit of window-dressing to placate his critics but as a really serious move to end the war. Let the Government say that they will stop arms supplies themselves, and let them ask the three other Governments still supplying arms to do the same. They will then be in a real position to help to bring peace.
Now, a word about the food situation. The Biafrans say that, at least temporarily, it has improved. The Churches and relief organisations are saving hundreds of thousands of lives. But there is a new and serious development. It is not only the young children who are suffering from kwashiokor—I saw many of the victims—but the elderly, those over 50, are now beginning to succumb.
Last, the bombing of civilians. Despite the denials, I have seen with my own eyes, as some of my hon. Friends present today have seen, the bombing of civilians by the Nigerian Air Force, and this well after the Foreign Secretary's talk about it with the Nigerian High Commissioner in London. I visited more than 20 bomb sites in Umuahia alone, and others at Orlu, a town some distance away. Nearly all involved ordinary houses, usually near the market place. This morning, I received a cable from Dr. Middelkoop. Dr. Middelkoop is the chief medical officer at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Umuahia, representing the World Council of Churches. I had two long discussions with him, and I am convinced of his tremendous integrity and courage. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. James Griffiths) and my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Dr. John Dunwoody) will confirm that. Here is the cable:
I am asked to inform you that one Ilyushin bomber dropped seven anti-personnel bombs on Umuahia township on Tuesday 11


March at 12.14. Bomber dropped four bombs in first instance and returned for a remainder. All but one on residential and market areas. 48 killed outright including one Catholic priest. Further 30 admitted to hospital of whom four died. Same plane dropped one bomb on village Hamaba/ a /Borro about eight miles from Umuahia but no specific information on casualties there.
I was taken round the wards of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital by the matron, Miss Ann Bent, of Lancashire, who has been in the hospital since it opened 15 years ago, also by Dr. O. Bourke of Bury, Lancashire, by the hospital administrator Mr. Cochrane, by Dr. Bakker, international adviser to the International Red Cross, and by several Biafran consultants and professors of medicine. The staff reported that the previous weekend they had operated on 60 civilian air-raid victims. They were so over-stretched at times that they had to have five operations in one theatre simultaneously. They have to operate without oxygen.
I remember one little boy of six who had been terribly disfigured for the rest of his life by the bombing on 25th February. The doctor showed me the piece of jagged shrapnel as big as a matchbox which he had removed from the boy's eye socket. The other eye was all right. I spoke to a beautiful 18-year-old girl, married and two months pregnant, who had suffered a compound leg fracture. At 10 o'clock one morning—the raids usually occur at about 11 or 12 o'clock, when the light is brightest and it is easiest for the pilots to get a good view—she had been selling soap in the market, which, as hon. Members will understand, would have been crowded at that time. Without warning, several bombs landed on the market. She did not even attempt to run away. She told me that she had seen people cut in two or decapitated. Others were terribly burned by the hot shrapnel. I saw these people myself. The aeroplanes were just above rooftop level, and that was why the people had no notice.
The matron told me, "Nearly every day a plane comes over, but it does not always drop bombs. The last raid was Sunday. Sometimes we go four or five days without bombs, and then we get them every day. Across the road in one house alone five brothers and sisters were killed".
I have taken 130 pages of notes about this and other aspects of the matter, and I have brought back scores of photographs. The evidence is absolutely incontestable. It is no use saying that there may be military targets in Umuahia. I cannot guarantee that there are none. All I can say is that I went round the town for four days on foot and by car and I did not see any. The biggest arms I saw were rifles and sten guns used or carried by the sentries at the road blocks.
It may be said that Umuahia is, after all, the capital. All right. At another town, Orlu, half-way between the capital and the Uli airport, ten yards away from the market place which, I was told, was crowded at the time of the raid, the houses were down; they were flat. There are no military targets there. So it goes on. I do not care what the nationality of the pilots is. It is wrong and should be stopped.
I could go on for an hour giving evidence of these cases. For instance, when I flew from Uli airstrip a few days ago, sitting next to me in the aeroplane was a European surgeon who himself had been operating the previous night on women and children who were civilian victims of an air raid which had taken place.
I say that this must stop, but that is not enough. I do not want merely to stop the bombing. I want to stop the war. If we want to stop the war, we must press for a cease-fire. There is a reasonable position adopted by one side, and Her Majesty's Government should exercise their pressure and influence with the other side to get a cease-fire, and they will be in a stronger position in every way to help bring about peace if they are not supplying arms and they try to get the three other nations still involved to do the same.

6.20 p.m.

Mr. Nigel Fisher: This tragic war has lasted now for 20 months with immense suffering on both sides but especially, no doubt, in Biafra. Until recently, it seemed that the quickest way to end the war and ultimately the most humanitarian way would be by a Federal military victory. But, reinforced by large supplies of arms from mainly French sources, the rebels have regained ground in some areas and the Federal advance


has been effectively stopped since the end of September.
I readily agree that this calls in question the proposition which I have advocated and still advocate of a military solution. But what other solution is there? Of course, one would like to see a ceasefire and a negotiated peace. We would all prefer that. But I believe that it is unrealistic and that we are deluding ourselves if we imagine that there is any basis for a political settlement.
Many conferences have been held and many people have tried hard to achieve this. Indeed, attempts through the O.A.U. are still being made. But the gulf is very wide, and I am afraid that the prospects are poor. As the Under-Secretary of State said in his opening speech, there is no lack of mediators. The problem is that there is a total lack of any proper basis for mediation. The gulf between the two sides is too wide to make bridges. Colonel Ojukwu insists upon the secession of Biafra, whereas, to the Federal Government, everything is negotiable except secession.
One of the main problems is that Biafra is just a name. It is not a nation. A Biafran Republic of the East-Central, South-East and Rivers States as such cannot continue to exist, because except for the very small Ibo heartland, it has been incorporated into Federal Nigeria. The minority tribes, consisting of 5 million people, their land, oilfields and ports will remain in Nigeria, not because they are forced to do so but because they want to do so. The last thing that the vast majority of Etiks, Ijaws and Ibibios want is to fall again under Ibo domination. They have experienced that once, and they do not want to experience it again.
The right hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe) spoke about self-determination for the Ibos. But what about self-determination for the minorities? Without the minorities, Iboland—if it can be called that—is a very small over-crowded area containing up to 7 million people, cut off from the sea and from the oil, and economically unviable as a separate State. Yet they fight on because Colonel Ojukwu has persuaded his people and perhaps himself that they must win the war or die.
If Colonel Ojukwu was really concerned to save Ibo lives, he would stop

the fighting, and the danger of mass starvation would end immediately and almost automatically. Indeed it would be greatly eased if he would agree to the use of the Obilagu airstrip or a land corridor for food and medical supplies, both of which General Gowon has offered. Colonel Ojukwu has a grave responsibility and much to answer for to his own people for refusing these offers. It is not possible to fly in enough of the carbohydrates which are needed if only night flights are allowed.
Recent Red Cross reports indicate that there has been a substantial reduction in the death rate from starvation, but there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of the reports of starvation in some parts of Biafra. What I do suggest is that the blame for this is attributable much more to the policy of Colonel Ojukwu than to that of General Gowon. This is not genocide by the Federals; it is, almost literally, a case of suicide by the Biafrans.
The only battle of importance that Colonel Ojukwu has won in this war has been the propaganda battle, both internally and externally. It has been an expensive and tragic victory for his own people, because the proposition widely believed by the Ibos is that they must fight on to survive.
I believe that there is no question of genocide, and no outside observer any longer seriously believes that there is any question of genocide as a policy. The international observers have stated again and again that there is no truth in it whatever. General Alexander has said:
the use of the term genocide is in no way justified.
On returning to London in December, Sir Bernard Fergusson reported that
there is not one shred of evidence of genocide",
and he confirmed this in an article in The Times the other day.
It should be remembered that the team of observers is given complete freedom of movement and investigation, and its reports are not seen in advance by the Federal Government. It is probably the first time in the history of war that a combatant nation has actually invited umpires to observe and, if they like, criticise the conduct of its troops. It is a most extraordinary state of affairs to have accepted, and it is significant in that it indicates that the Nigerians have nothing to hide.
After spending several months visiting the battle areas on each sector of the front, it is remarkable that the team of international observers has seen nothing to which it could object. Indeed, the observers have found considerable evidence that the Federal troops are doing all they can at some sacrifice of fighting manpower to look after the Ibo people and their property in the territory that they have taken over. Prisoners of war are adequately fed and well treated. Nigerian troops are aware of the code of conduct laid down by General Gowon. Their discipline is good, and they are under the firm control of their officers.
I am talking, of course, of the Nigerian ground troops. There has been evidence, reported by Mr. Winston Churchill and others, of the bombing of civilian targets in this war. That must be taken seriously. However, it is contrary to the orders of the Nigerian Command. I do not mind what nationality the pilots are. There are those who say that they are Egyptians. Whoever they are, it may be that they are not very accurate and not very brave.

Mr. Michael Foot: Some of us sympathise with many of the opinions that the hon. Gentleman expresses. However, does he not think that the indiscriminate bombing has reached such a scale that those who adopt his attitude towards the Nigerian Government should make an appeal to that Government to stop all the bombing raids for a period? Indeed, we should like to see them stopped altogether. If that appeal was made from this House, would it not have some effect?

Mr. Fisher: Yes, and I was about to make it. It may be that the objective of some of these pilots is to get rid of their bomb loads as soon as possible and as far away as possible from anti-aircraft fire. Probably that is one of the explanations. It is likely, therefore, that mistakes have been made. But I submit that the mistakes have been despite and not because of Federal policy. In fairness to the Federals, I believe that Mr. Churchill in his article should have made crystal-clear what I know he knows to be the fact—that it is the individual pilots and not the Federal Government who are to blame for these regrettable attacks.

Mr. Stanley Orme: Those of us who have had some experience of this know that the military commanders are responsible. They must take the responsibility for what their pilots do. This sort of thing happened in the Second World War. If they cannot control their pilots, then the pilots should be grounded and the bombing stopped.

Mr. Fisher: I do not know why hon. Members get so indignant. I was just coming to that point. [HON. MEMBERS: "You are not."] You do not know what I am going to say. How can you? I am just coming to that very point.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let us have a little less anger, please.

Mr. Fisher: On his side, General Gowon should discipline and instantly dismiss any pilot who has disobeyed the orders of the Federal Command. Personally, I would go further. As I ventured to suggest in a letter to The Times, I would stop the bombing altogether. If it is not accurate, and clearly a lot of it is not, it is largely ineffective from a military point of view. It is certainly very bad for the international reputation of Nigeria from a propaganda point of view. And it is almost certainly counterproductive in Biafra because it rallies the Ibos behind Colonel Ojukwu and reinforces their fears of genocide, which I believe to be groundless but which they believe to be real.
As a friend of Nigeria, I believe that the bombing is doing more harm than good and should cease, so I respond entirely to the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) in making that appeal to General Gowon. But if we ask a man to throw away one weapon he is unlikely to respond unless we give him another to replace it. I do not think for one moment, as I have said earlier, that there can be a negotiated end to this war. So we must get a military end to it—quickly, quickly, quickly—to save further starvation among the Ibos. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Some people are always shocked when those who share my view ask for a quick military solution, but it is obviously much the most humanitarian way in the end.

Mrs. Anne Kerr: Would the hon. Gentleman like to give the Federal Government nuclear weapons?

Mr. Fisher: I do not think that intervention was worth making.
The only conceivable military end to the war is a Federal victory. Everyone knows that. So I say: "Make this possible by increasing our supplies of ground weapons, especially of armoured vehicles." All this talk of an arms embargo is—I was about to say sanctimonious nonsense, but I do not want to say that because it would be unfair to hon. Members who advocate it, and I know how sincerely they feel about this matter. My complaint is not that they are not sincere, because I know they are, but that they are talking today with their hearts and not with their heads.
We are not going to end the war by an arms embargo. We should only prolong it. What sort of arms embargo do hon. Members want? Presumably a multilateral embargo. Of course, if it was total, it would be desirable but it would have to include France and Russia—and what real hope is there of that? I personally accept what the Secretary of State said on an earlier occasion—that it would be virtually impossible to organise or to enforce a total embargo. I believe that it is unrealistic to believe that one could organise it.
What is the alternative?—a unilateral embargo by Britain alone; but that would make no difference at all to the outcome of the war. Any deficiencies, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home) said in his remarkable opening speech, and as other hon. Members have pointed out, would be made up by Russia. It cannot be a British interest to increase Russian influence in Lagos, which is no doubt already greater than we in the West would wish. An embargo by Britain alone would simply have the effect of doing immense damage to Anglo-Nigerian relations; and most other countries—a factor which has not been sufficiently stressed on this or on previous occasions——

Mr. Simon Mahon: Is the hon. Gentleman saying that we, with all our history, and after all these years, should have exactly the same sort of morality and moral judgment as the Russians?

Mr. Fisher: No. But I cannot take up that point now. It must be done on another occasion. Surely the hon. Gentleman does not suggest that I am wrong in saying that an embargo by Britain alone would do immense damage to Anglo-Nigerian relations. What I want to stress is that most other African countries would regard such an action as hostile to Nigeria and as encouraging tribal fragmentation in Africa. The O.A.U. voted by 33 votes to four last September in support of the territorial integrity and unity of Nigeria. We cannot overlook that. It is the opinion of the African nations by an almost 10 to one vote.
We created Nigeria. We trained and equipped its army. We are the traditional source of its arms supplies. The Nigerian Government are recognised by Britain and by the United Nations. It is a fellow member of the Commonwealth. Britain has very large investments in Nigeria, and 16,000 British people live there.
The Under-Secretary of State is a very good Minister and knows a great deal about Africa. But I suggest to him that it might have been wiser to rely upon these arguments of moral obligation and self-interest than to suggest, as the Government have done for so long, that if we ceased supplying arms we should lose our restraining influence in Lagos. It is better to recognise the British interest and our special obligations towards Nigeria.
My plea to the Government is to be brave and to disregard the well-meant but woolly words about being neutral in this civil war. We are not neutral in this war and we never have been. I say to the hon. Gentlemen, "Back your friends and back your convictions. Back Nigeria not 50 per cent. but 100 per cent. Furthermore, if you do that, you will be doing what is right because only in that way can you end this tragic war quickly and so save the lives of thousands of Ibo people."

6.38 p.m.

Mr. Raphael Tuck: I appreciate that many of my hon. Friends hold deep and fervent views about this tragic situation. I respect those views but, unfortunately, I find myself in disagreement with them. If there were any possibility whatever of stopping this war by ceasing to send arms to the Nigerian


Government, I would unhesitatingly declare for it immediately and vote for it. But I do not believe that there is that possibility if we make a unilateral stoppage.
I find myself in agreement with many of the sentiments expressed by the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home), by my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Wyatt) and by the hon. Member for Surbiton (Mr. Fisher). If we did stop sending arms others would continue to do so. Of course I agree that if we could get a total embargo it would be most desirable, but are we likely to get a total embargo by unilaterally stopping the supply of British arms? I do not believe that we can, and so the position is rather a curious one.
I am a little bewildered by some of the arguments, because supposing there was, for example, an armed uprising of Maoris in Australia—[Interruption.]—I am sorry, in New Zealand—would anybody declare that we must not send New Zealand arms? Or supposing there was an armed rising in Quebec—and there has been some talk about "Quebec libre"—would we be wrong to continue to supply Canada with arms? Supposing Welsh or Scottish Nationalists were to create an armed uprising here, would not we expect our allies to be able to send arms to quell the rebellion?
I recoil with horror, as all hon. Members do, from the bombing of civilian targets and, in this respect, I welcome the sending of Sir Denis Greenhill to Nigeria to acquaint General Gowon of the possible dire consequences if this continues. We have heard a great deal about the atrocities on both sides. I have had daily the Markpress propaganda from Biafra.

Mr. Roebuck: Twice a day.

Mr. Tuck: I have had it daily. This must be costing an inestimable amount of money, and it is my suggestion that that money could be far better used for food for those who are suffering from malnutrition and for relief. I have had no propaganda whatever from the Nigerian Government. I have not had the advantage of being in Nigeria, as the hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Frank Allaun) has, but I have had the advantage of seeing in Watford last week

Dr. B. W. T. Richardson who has been to Nigeria not for three days, as has my hon. Friend, but for three months. He was for two months in Afikpo and one month in Iburu, which is about 25 miles from Umuahia. He was also in Enugu, at the headquarters, to report to the field co-ordinator. Dr. Richardson was the head of a Red Cross relief team sponsored by the Adventist Mission. The greater number he dealt with were women and children suffering from malnutrition and the diseases that go with it. Each day his team went to a village and set up a mobile clinic and took back to base the very seriously ill women and children. This doctor said there was no sign whatever of genocide on the part of the Federal troops.
Father O'Brien, a Roman Catholic priest, has been there since last April. He was the only European to stay, and he gave evidence to the International Investigating Committee that there was no thought of genocide or anything like it on the part of the Federal troops. Dr. Richardson's experience is that the Federal troops showed every sympathy, pity and compassion for the local population. They would often bring children in from the bush to the team and also inform them where there were more groups in need of medical treatment. In addition, they defended the team from attacks of Biafran guerrillas who seemed little concerned with compassion and tended to terrorise the local people.
The Ibos came in from the bush and tried to discourage the local people from assisting the Red Cross team, whom they have described, particularly in the last few weeks, as "white mercenaries". Dr. Richardson says attacks were made on the local population merely because they helped the Red Cross. Some of the helpers were so terrorised by Biafran guerrillas that they actually left the compound and went into the bush. Some of the native helpers of the Red Cross were even shot while others were taken into the bush and mercilessly beaten because they had helped the Red Cross.
I am informed by Dr. Richardson that apparently the Ibos cannot appreciate the word "neutrality". Unless one is helping them one is against them. I know that it is dangerous to make a generalisation from the particular, but the House


should know something of the attitude and conduct displayed by the Federal troops on the one side and the Ibos on the other. After all, this was a Federal-occupied area of Ibo territory; and the House should know something of what the Federal troops were doing and, on the other hand, what the Ibos were doing against the Red Cross.
Her Majesty's Government have been placed in a well-nigh impossible position Whatever they do they will be cursed by one side or the other. They can only do their best on the information before them. I would ask the House, therefore, to give the Government sympathetic consideration in the unfortunate dilemma and situation in which they find themselves at present through no fault of their own.

Mr. Speaker: May I remind the House that many hon. Gentlemen wish to speak. Brief speeches will help.

6.45 p.m.

Viscount Lambton: In this debate we have seen the House of Commons moved by very deep feelings. War is, of course, an agonising experience. Nobody can like anything to do with war; and with all the modern weapons it becomes increasingly unpleasant. Therefore, the natural wish and thought of everyone in this House must be to see how quickly we can end this war and bring some kind of lasting peace to Nigeria. At first sight, the moral argument seems to point to the fact that everyone should support an immediate cease-fire and support Biafra against the Nigerian Government. But surely the true morality of the situation depends upon what results from the decision which we make today.
In this case, if we stop the flow of arms to Nigeria, we can, I suppose, hold our heads high and pride ourselves on the Tightness of our conduct. But, in the long run, is it likely that we shall be satisfied with what we have done? As was said by the hon. Member for Watford (Mr. Raphael Tuck), arms will almost inevitably continue to go to Nigeria, perhaps at an even greater rate than they are going today. Fragmentation, which surely must be the enemy of all progress in Africa, will have been encouraged. Soviet penetration and intrigue into the continent will also have

been encouraged, and the war will not be one day nearer its end.
I suspect that hon. Members opposite have been influenced by the fact that the Government have themselves been influenced by our great trading interests in Nigeria, but how could they not have been? Merely to make a fruitless gesture and to snap a long association and friendship would suggest an irresponsibility that I am glad to say they have not shown. This is an occasion when the House is motivated by genuine feeling. Every inclination must cause us to desire an end of the war. The Government, therefore, are in the most difficult of positions. In my view, they have shown great courage in facing facts as they actually are and in resisting the temptation to take a synthetic moral view which in the long run will be disastrous for Africa and Nigeria.
It would be wrong, however, not to have reservations about the present situation in the war. After all, the war cannot be allowed to drag on for ever. But today there seems to be a chance, a hope, that we may yet play a part to end it. Although why the Prime Minister cannot announce his visit in an ordinary manner I cannot say. There also remains a chance for us to ensure that medicine and food continue to be flown to Biafra. How can we be certain that this would happen if we withdraw and the Russian tacticians take our place? They might well regard such kindness as being mistaken. Therefore, tonight I support the Government's action. Not to do so would be to indulge in the luxury of the false morality that might in the short term bring a feeling of unctuous satisfaction, but which would in the long term be disastrous for Nigeria and Africa.

6.50 p.m.

Mr. David Winnick: The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Viscount Lambton) has put his point of view with great force. When the civil war broke out in Nigeria 18 months ago I tried to avoid taking sides politically. If anything, I had a certain amount of sympathy for the Federal Government's viewpoint, the desire that Nigeria should remain one country. As has been pointed out, we know the likely effects of secessionist movements in various parts of Africa and the havoc that


would be caused to independent African countries if such movements were to succeed.
It is perfectly understandable that when the war broke out in Nigeria 18 months ago the Government took the line that arms shipments should continue. Nigeria was an independent Commonwealth country, faced with a rebellion, civil war, call it whatever one likes. It should also be said that there were very few in this House, on either side, who criticised the Government for continuing arms supplies when the war started. I am speaking, however, tonight because I have many doubts about the way in which the war is proceeding and the attitude of the British Government.
I have been unhappy for some months, even before recent reports of the bombing raids, because it seems that in many respects the Government have made a wrong analysis of what is happening in Nigeria. I do not belong to either Lobby. Some hon. Gentlemen will say that I am speaking tonight on behalf of the Biafran lobby. People outside the House who are—and there is no shame about it—part of the so-called Biafran lobby know that I am not part of their movement. We have a determination on the part of the Ibos to maintain their independence, to refuse in any circumstances to return to a situation where they will be part of Federal Nigeria. Of course we can deplore it. We can see the likely effect if the civil war ends with Biafra becoming independent.
It cannot alter the situation that there is a fierce determination on the part of the Ibos to continue the war unless they can win recognition earlier. Some have said that if only Colonel Ojukwu and his close colleagues in the Biafran leadership went, the war would virtually come to an end. I do not believe that. The Biafrans to whom I have spoken here have made it clear that, with or without Colonel Ojukwu, the Biafrans, as they consider themselves, would fight on because they believe that they are right. It is no good going back to what happened in the Congo in 1960 or 1961 or what happened in Spain before the Second World War. Each situation is different.
I do not believe that the Ibos are likely to be defeated in the near future.

The question must be asked, even if the Nigerians can win: is the price worth paying? There is mounting anxiety in Britain about the bombing raids and the high civilian casualties. At one time when it was reported that civilians were being bombed and killed in Biafra it was dismissed as being part of Biafran propaganda. No one has suggested that today. It has now been confirmed that it is a fact that such raids are taking place and civilians are being bombed. I do not have a great deal of confidence in the ability of Egyptian pilots to be able to distinguish, or wish to distinguish, between civilian and military targets.
The reports in The Times by Mr. Winston Churchill have been referred to. Last year another Times correspondent, Mr. William Norris, reported at the time about the bombing raids. I have one cutting from The Times article by Mr. Norris, dated 27th April, 1968. He reported that 79 people were killed outright and many were seriously injured in a bombing raid. I take a certain amount of responsibility not for questioning the word of Mr. Norris and other such correspondents, but believing, nevertheless, that the Nigerians were waging a war and it was right to carry on. I have now come to a different viewpoint.
In the Observer of last Sunday the correspondent writing from Ibo-land, David Robison, reported a Father Bernard Murphy describing one such bombing raid. Father Murphy said:
Burned out bodies and charred pieces of bodies were lying in every possible shape and angle. All clothes had been blasted off by the explosions. Mangled lumps of flesh … severed limbs and heads were lying over an area of about 100 yards by 100 yards. Between the bodies were 6-ft. craters.
The correspondent added:
Without exception, foreigners who have been here for months say that the Nigerian jets have hardly ever bombed military targets. Troops in different sectors say that the safest places from bombing are the camps and the front.
In view of such reports, as a Member of Parliament I must say that I do not believe we should be silent or indifferent. Neither, in my view, should we carry on with our present policy.
What can we do? It has already been said, rightly, that Nigeria is an independent country and that we are virtually foreigners; that if Britain was faced with a civil war we would not expect Nigeria


or Canada to be able to intervene with much success. Because there is no guarantee that if we change our policy we can end the war, I do not believe that that can be an excuse for carrying on with our present policy. When I tried to get an emergency debate last week I said that no one has accused Britain of being responsible directly for the raids. No British plane and no British pilots have been involved. We know that they are Russian planes and Egyptian pilots. However, as long as we continue to send arms to Nigeria we have a moral responsibility for what is happening.

Mr. John Fraser: Would my hon. Friend not concede that small arms create much less loss of life than bombing and that if we were to cut our arms supplies it might result in a greater reliance on bombing?

Mr. Winnick: Yes. I am also saying that the analysis of the war is wrong. There must be not a military solution but a political solution. I do not urge that arms supplies should be cut off immediately, but what I should like our Government to say to the Nigerians is that unless the bombing raids stop, then the arms supplies will be cut off. It seems that our Government are refusing to say as much in such terms to the Nigerian authorities.
Unless we have such a guarantee it will be impossible for me tonight to vote for the Government. What I hope we are trying to do is to urge the Nigerian Government to accept that there cannot be a military solution to the war, to recognise that there must be a cease-fire leading to negotiations, that they cannot go back to the status quo. It seems that the Nigerian Government are still hoping for a military victory, and in those circumstances it is understandable that they should refuse to cut bombing raids. I should also like to see a position come about where we, publicly in the United Nations and elsewhere, take up with the Americans, the Russians, the French and the West Germans the whole question of international arms supplies to both sides in the civil war.
Let me say a word about the Soviet Union. I may be wrong but I have seen very little justification from the Russians for what they are doing in Nigeria. We know that planes and arms are being

shipped from the Soviet Union to Nigeria, and I do not believe that the Soviet Union and its people should be proud of what they are doing. Neither do I make excuses for France or Portugal, or even South Africa, who may be supplying Biafra. I am well aware of the arms supplies which are being sent to both sides other than those from our own country. In conclusion, I hope the Government will adopt the same attitude as that advocated by a noted British authority on Nigeria, the very distinguished lady, Dame Margery Perham.

It being Seven o'clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of The CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS under Standing Order No. 7 (Time for taking Private Business), further Proceeding stood postponed.

PRIVATE BUSINESS

BRIGHTON CORPORATION BILL (By Order)

YORK CORPORATION BILL (By Order)

Second Reading deferred till Monday next at Seven o'clock.

NIGERIA

Postponed proceedings on Question, That this House do now adjourn, resumed.

Question again proposed.

Mr. Winnick: I would quote from a letter which Margery Perham wrote to The Times on 7th August, 1968:
Why do we continue a trade which Belgium, France and Holland have now renounced on moral grounds and which associates us with Russia and with the Egyptian airmen who have been destroying Biafra's churches, hospitals and schools? Are we to follow the advice given by Mr. Healey in the Commons on 17th July in defence of the arms trade, to consider the value of the contracts and the interests in them of some Members' constituents, the same arguments used in defence of the slave trade?".
In another letter to The Times she writes:
Britain has no power over Nigeria but she has the historical, cultural and economic links which, if used with wisdom and


generosity, might at this juncture help to bring this hideous war to an end and promote the first steps towards a unified Nigeria and a reconstructed Biafra. Such proposals must be speculative in view of the scanty news we receive from Nigeria, but they could at least be a basis for discussion".
It is because I do not believe the Government wish to change their policy of continued arms shipment for various commercial reasons, that I have no alternative but to vote against the Motion. I hope there will be sufficient of us to warn our Government and the Nigerian Government there cannot be an indefinite continuation of this hideous and unjust war, which sooner or later must be ended on political grounds.

7.02 p.m.

Mr. John Tilney: Before commenting on the speech of the hon. Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Winnick), I ought to declare an interest. I am a director of a company with large trading interests both in Nigeria and the old Eastern Region, with a fleet which operated on the river which now forms no-man's land between what is Ibo-land and the West of Nigeria. One has great interest therefore in stopping this war, but far more important is the interest in stopping the carnage which has horrified so many people in this country.
The hon. Gentleman referred to Biafra, but in the many visits I have paid to Nigeria I never heard of Biafra until 1967. There was no such place. If only the Ibos had been sensible enough to claim only their territory and not dominion over the peoples in the southeast state and in the Rivers State, one would have very much more sympathy with them. They want their imperial dominion and have gone on saying so.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Watford (Mr. Raphael Tuck) said that Her Majesty's Government had got themselves into an impossible situation. I agree. Whether they have been badly advised or whether they have come to the wrong conclusions, they have not done well for themselves or for this country.

Mr. Raphael Tuck: I think I said Her Majesty's Government found themselves or were placed in an impossible situation, not "had got themselves into an impossible situation".

Mr. Tilney: My view is, because of their policy, their lack of drive in grasping the nettle, their position is that much more dangerous. As long ago as 16th August, 1967, I wrote to the Daily Telegraph:
Let us either endeavour to get the Commonwealth to send troops to keep the peace while arbitration is enforced among the warring states, or remain out of internal squabbles.
In the meantime, we should try to get all nations to embargo the sale of arms to the whole area and the British Government should offer our good services to mediate if asked to do so.
At that time the B.B.C. and the Press were paying not the slightest attention to the embryo war in Nigeria, any more than they are paying any attention to the war that is now going on in the Sudan. There was no comment from my right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) and not a squeak out of the Spectator. Two days after my letter the Spectator had, for the first time an article on Nigeria, which said:
There is a case for supplying the Federal Government with the arms and aircraft they are asking for. But there is only a good case if it can be shown that such arms deliveries would not be used again to massacre civilians and that they would—as claimed—bring quick victory for the Federal Government".
Of course one would like to see a cease-fire, but it is no good having a cease-fire unless there is a police force to make certain that the time during which there is a cease-fire is not used to build up more arms from France and elsewhere. How can the Federal Government possibly agree unless Colonel Ojukwu says beforehand that he will accept some form of liaison within a united federal or confederal Nigeria?
I fear it is now too late for this embargo, even if one could ever get agreement on it. If we do stop arms the lives of 16,000 British citizens scattered all over Nigeria might well be in danger. The feeling would be that this country had let the Nigerian people down. We also have vast British interests there, but these are minor matters compared with the moral attitude that we should take.
It is as well to note what the New Nigeria, the paper printed in Kaduna, says on 10th March:
We should decide not to buy any more arms from Britain. Even Wilson's critics agree that Britain is not the unique armoury of the


world. … Both Nigeria and Britain will then have entered the era of trading in selective goods, something akin to voluntary and mutual selective sanctions.
It may well turn out that Britain is not holding all the trumps as Wilson's Parliamentary critics seem to believe.
It is as well to bear in mind the feeling of some Nigerians at the present time.
Whatever the Federal Government say, I still believe there is a need for some form of peace-keeping force, not only to organise the food supply. I am told there are a million or more people starving north of the Onitsha/Enugu road where there is no fighting going on but where they are virtually contained. I do not know why a corridor could not be made to reach those people.
I believe in a peace-keeping force because the Ibos are more likely to surrender to such a force. I heard only yesterday from an Ibo ship-owner, who had escaped with his family of eight children by walking for many days through the bush out of Ibo-land, that they were conditioned to believe that if they surrendered to the Federal troops they would be shot. This is the result of Ibo propaganda.

Mr. John Lee: That is what happened in the North.

Mr. Tilney: I accept what happened in the North. I will come to that a little later. It is a major world interest to end this ghastly conflict. We all have a horror of bombing. I accept with sympathy the sincerity of hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House who have spoken about bombing. I remember very well, however, being bombed outside Caen by the United States Air Force who were 90 degrees out for line. I also remember being bombed by our own Air Force and the Americans by mistake even in Normandy, which is an area where targets are easily noticed. Anyone who has flown over the rain forests of Nigeria knows that the territory all looks alike for hundreds of miles. It is extremely difficult to pinpoint military targets.
I fear that the war has already been too prolonged by our lack of action. Whether it was bad advice that the Government received or bad decisions, only history can judge. But I ask the Foreign Secretary to answer this question: is it true that our High Commissioner in Lagos, when Ironsi was killed, was asked

for British troops by the acting Head of State before General Gowon took over? Was that request sent to London? If so, what was the Government's reply? It is arguable that had we sent a paratroop battalion into Ikeja airport at that time, not only would the civil war never have taken place, but there would have been no excuse, and probably no need, for the massacres which ultimately occurred and which were Colonel Ojukwu's excuse for seceding from the Federation. It is fascinating to speculate on the "ifs" of history. But the Tory Government prevented civil wars in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. President de Gaulle has prevented them in the Gabon and Chad. Could this Government have prevented them, too?
The British Government have dithered and done nothing; they have sat on the fence. All that they have done is to send conventional arms in a sort of quarter-hearted manner. I accept that they could not do more immediately because of the many British people in Ibo land at that time, but, once the British had left so-called Biafra after a few months, and once the Government had decided to back the Federal Government, they should have backed them fully and in a major way.
I still think that we should give the Federal Government possibly aeroplanes and bombs with delayed fuses, not these awful anti-personnel bombs, which are no good. If it is required to knock out an airport or airstrip, a heavy bomb with a delayed action fuse should be used. If it falls in the wrong place, it is very unlikely to hit people on the head. If civilians are near, it gives them ample time to get away. Why do not the Government help in that way?

Mr. Peter Mahon: Would the hon. Gentleman expect thousands of small children to understand this strategy?

Mr. Tilney: They have only to see the bombs drop. The hon. Gentleman knows that many time bombs fell on Liverpool and people could get away from where they fell. They had the opportunity to do so. It was the bombs that exploded immediately which were so dangerous.
The trouble is that the pro-Biafran lobby in the House has listened too much to the propaganda from Markpress. It


would be folly to refuse to supply arms now. It would jeopardise our vast British interests. It would help Russia. It would prolong the war and starvation and would give a boost to further Balkanisation, which is one of the worst possible things which could happen in Africa.

Mr. John Lee: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Interventions prolong speeches and many hon. Members wish to speak.

Mr. Lee: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He speaks, as others have done, about Balkanisation. Would he concede, first, that the scope and size of Nigeria makes his argument somewhat false? Secondly, he knows as well as I do that Nigeria is riddled by cleavages far greater and of much longer duration than the kind of problems which have arisen in other parts of the world? There is much more reason for division in that country than possibly there is in other African countries.

Mr. Tilney: Exactly the same could have been said of what remained of the Confederate States in the United States at one time. If the rump of Ibo-land is allowed to have independence, the Ibos could not properly survive and enjoy a decent standard of living.
I urge Her Majesty's Government, not only to continue their present policy, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Surbiton (Mr. Fisher) suggested, if the Nigerians stop the bombing, to give them more hardware.

7.15 p.m.

Mr. Michael Barnes: This is the fifth time in nine months that we have debated Nigeria and Biafra. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Wyatt) said, it is no surprise that many Nigerians, in particular, protest about this. They wonder why we debate their affairs so often. But we do so since we in Britain are directly involved, because of our policy of supplying arms to Nigeria and because if there is a military solution, and if this is how it all ends, we in Britain cannot dissociate ourselves from it. This gives us the right, and indeed the duty, to continue to debate what is happening between Nigeria and Biafra as long as we supply arms.
Given the stand taken by both sides, given the fact that Nigeria says that it will agree to talks only if they are on the basis of one Nigeria, and given that Biafra says that it will agree to talks only if there is a cease-fire and the talks are without pre-conditions, the view of most people who have visited both sides recently, as my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) and I have done, is that there is no chance of meaningful talks between the two sides in the foreseeable future.
In view of that, and in view of the military stalemate, Britain must choose. One can understand the protest about the bombing in this country, but it is not enough to say, "Stop the bombing". The choice is this: either we take the view which the hon. Member for Surbiton (Mr. Fisher) took, which is similar to the view of my hon. Friend the Member for York—and I hope that he will have a chance to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker—[Interruption.] This is an important point and I hope that hon. Members will listen. Either we take the view put forward by them with great sincerity that a Federal military victory is the only acceptable way out, even at a very high price, or we take the view, which is the one that I take, that a military solution can be achieved at present only at such a price that it would be a disaster of such magnitude that it should be avoided at all costs.
My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State said that he wants to see a peaceful solution. Of course he does; we all do. But while Biafra will not accept one Nigeria, it is implicit in British policy that there must be a Federal victory. It is most important for an understanding of the situation that hon. Members realise this. Because of this, I wish to address myself to the practicality of a military solution.
The present stalemate has continued for over six months with not much territory being gained or lost. All the evidence which has come out of Biafra recently from hon. Members who have visited it and from journalists like Mr. Churchill is that there is no sign of a Federal military victory unless they are able greatly to increase their fire power. That means not only more weapons but more sophisticated weapons from us and from Russia. If that is done, what will


be the situation after this military victory?
When one hears Nigerian politicians say, as Dr. Arikpo said to my hon. Friend the Member for York and me when we were in Lagos, "Either the Biafrans talk on the basis of one Nigeria, or we fight it out", one wonders what kind of "one Nigeria" this will be if it is fought out to a conclusion. Will not a huge legacy of bitterness and hatred be added to all the other volatile factors which have kept Nigeria in such difficulty in recent years?
Very little thought appears to be given in Lagos; to this question, partly because the view persists there that it is only Colonel Ojukwu and "his clique" who have to be overcome. My hon. Friend and I took very different views before we visited Nigeria, and we still have different views on what should be the outcome. But there were many facts which we were able to see with our own eyes and about which we were able to agree. One of them is that to talk of "Colonel Ojukwu and his clique" could not be further from the truth. If one of the bombs landing on Umuahia were to kill Colonel Ojukwu, someone else would carry on. The will to fight to the end runs right through the Biafran people, from very young children through to the old men who are to be found sitting on benches patiently waiting for their daily meal at the local feeding centre. It is a will which goes right through the people. Some hon. Members may think that it is misplaced, but for an understanding of the situation it is vital to accept that it is there.
If a military solution is aimed at and achieved and if the war is fought through to the end, it will mean as many deaths again from military casualties as we have seen already from starvation, so tightly are people packed into the area which is now Biafra.
If we can first be clear about what a military solution would involve, if it happened, we must then ask ourselves whether support for a Federal victory is the only practical policy for Britain, given the present intransigence of the two sides. I believe that that is not so and that there are alternatives. If we were to choose to do so, I believe that it would still be possible for Britain to bring home to Nigeria that a military solution is no

longer possible and certainly not desirable.
I know that it is not fashionable to talk about British influence, but I believe that it is in our power to bring home to both sides that they have to settle for something short of their original objectives, with Nigeria accepting something short of one Nigeria and Biafra accepting something short of full secession.
People may ask how the British Government are to put that to the Biafrans in their present mood. My hon. Friend and I heard Colonel Ojukwu making a major speech to his Consultative Assembly slating the British Government and threatening British interests. However, one interesting feature of his speeches is the amount of space in them that he allocates to dealing with Britain and the British Government. The view persists in Biafra that a key to the war may lie in London.
If Britain were to attempt the course that I suggest, we should have to start by sending someone to Biafra. Most people seem to go to Lagos, including Ministers. International observers go to Nigeria. However, the nature of this war is such, because it is the Nigerians who are pressing in upon the Biafrans, that anyone who wants to see the bomb holes in the middle of market places has to go to Biafra. The observers should be in Biafra, not Nigeria, and I support the suggestion that the Biafrans should be asked to accept international observers.
If the British Government took this course of action and, in the first place, sent a special envoy of some kind to Biafra, possibly with instructions to stay for a period, some influence could be brought to bear. It might be a Minister. It might even be Mr. Parker, the former Deputy High Commissioner in Enugu, who was withdrawn shortly after the fighting began. There is great respect for his views among Biafrans, but the impression of many people in London is that his views have not been taken into account by the Government. Indeed, I believe that he was switched to another desk at the Foreign Office. If that is the case, it is a great pity.
On the Nigerian side, I believe that Britain is still in a position to urge upon the Nigerians that a military solution is not possible. There is one reason only. It is our diplomatic support alone that


continues to give respectability to the policy of trying to gain a military solution. I do not believe that a military solution could survive the withdrawal of British support. British diplomatic and arms support is so fundamental to the Nigerian policy of trying to gain a military victory that that policy could not be pursued in the face of a withdrawal of British support.
Nor do I believe that such an action by Britain would throw Nigeria immediately into the arms of the Russians, as many hon. Members have suggested. In my view, our present policy is doing just that. There is deep disillusionment in Nigeria about the attitude of the British Government. In the post the other day I received a Press release from Nigeria House. Someone had marked the final paragraph and added:
In fact, Nigerians are fed up with the double-standard policy of the British Government.
It is not signed, and I suppose that anyone could have sent it. On the other hand, I do not know who has access to Nigeria House Press releases. Again, in The Times the other day there appeared a letter from someone at the University of Lagos. In the course of it, the writer said:
Nigeria has other, clearer-sighted friends who show no sign of abandoning her—rather the reverse. As I write, a flotilla of Soviet warships lies off the Lagos Marina, and its commander has cheered us all with a forthright statement of his country's support for One Nigeria.
If we continue our present policy and if the gist of Sir Denis Greenhill's visit and that of other visits made to Lagos in the near future is merely to try and play down the bombing and to persuade the Nigerians not to bomb while still offering more Saracens or Saladins, Nigeria will still have to turn to Russia for more arms, because she will need more sophisticated weapons to gain victory. The more the present trends continue, the more Britain will be seen in Nigeria as being her fair-weather friend, whereas the Russians will be seen more and more in Nigeria as being her true friends, with all that that will imply for both countries in the post-war situation, when it comes. I do not believe that Britain would lose anything that we have not lost already by urging a political settlement on the Nigerian Government. Regrettably, my hon. Friend and I did

not have as much time as we would have liked to travel extensively in Nigeria, although we had important talks in Lagos. But in Biafra everywhere we went, the cry was, "Can you do nothing to stop the war? How long does it have to go on?"
Whatever their views about this, hon. Members would do well to be aware of and pay tribute to the wonderful work that many Nigerians, Biafrans, non-Nigerians in Nigeria and non-Biafrans in Biafra are doing to relieve the suffering taking place. Daily acts of heroism of great magnitude are carried out by relief workers of many different kinds. It is invidious to mention names. One can only speak of people whom one has met. Mention has been made, for example, of the matron of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Umuahia. The hospital was built originally for 150 patients. There are now 700.
I can think of people like Father Doheny, whom we met, who runs the sick bay at a little place called Ezinihitte. There are 580 patients, 400 of them kwashiokor children, not enough medicines, not enough food and just one doctor. There are the sisters in the convents who run the feeding centres, the Red Cross, and the Churches which operate the airlift. Let those who advocate a military solution speak to the people who have to clear up the human debris that is left behind by a so-called military solution.
When my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary winds up, I shall look for some sign that the British Government now accept that a military solution is no longer possible and certainly not desirable. If we do not get a significant sign in that direction I will vote against the Government. Whatever happens in the vote, I will continue to fight, if the policy does not change, against a policy which I believe has now become totally counterproductive.

7.31 p.m.

Sir Frederic Bennett: Mr. Speaker, as you require us to be brief I will not comment on the speech of the hon. Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr. Barnes), except to say that I was not sure that his reasoning about what would happen if the British went out and the Russians came in altogether justified the conclusions he reached. But he has


made his position clear, and I should like to do the same.
In the first place, we have all been subjected to so much propaganda both in this House and in the country from so-called Biafran sources about Biafra that many of us have forgotten that there is no such place anyhow. This is a name which has recently been created.
It is worth while, if we are talking about being in the Biafran lobby or pro-Biafran, to look at what the Biafran State that Colonel Ojukwu claims would consist of if he got his way. It is not the little Iboland to which his forces are restricted in the deeply populated areas. It would comprise nearly as many non-Ibos in Biafra as there are Ibos in the whole area.
It is an odd thing to hear Ibos making the plea that all they require is their own state and that they do not want to be a minority element in the whole of Nigeria. If we are not blinded by the pamphlets that we receive every day, the fact is that the proportion of non-Ibos in any Biafra would be a great deal larger than the proportion of Biafrans in Federal Nigeria. Those who plead for the maintenance of Biafra and say that this little place has to win its position in the world should consider what is to happen and who will decide the fate of the five million non-Ibos who show no sign, so far, of wanting to be ruled by the Ibos in these other areas.
I suppose that people will say there ought to be a plebiscite, which is the standard weapon in trying to get out of any awkward situation. But, even with a plebiscite, I do not think that anybody who knows the area remotely would doubt the answer. The net result would be the same and Biafra would be reduced to Iboland as it is now, where the Ibos are in a large majority.
If we accept the reasoning that there is no such place as Biafra but that there is an Iboland, those who talk about justifying a political settlement, which I presume includes an economic settlement, are living in a pipe dream. I suggest that Iboland cannot exist as an economic entity, let alone a political one. Hence I cannot understand the argument of those who look at the area to which Colonel Ojukwu is restricted by the conduct of the war as a potential nation-

state in other words, back in the heartland where the Ibos are in a heavy majority—I sympathise with their emotions; I have as much reason as anybody to dislike and abhor war—but I cannot say that the so-called Biafrans must be allowed to secede and at the same time advocate that the resultant state would comprise a large number of people who do not want to be in any Ibo-dominated state.
Those who have spoken with such fervour and passion today on behalf of the so-called Biafran right to self-determination should spend more time considering what the other people concerned want. They should spend a few minutes describing to us how the Iboland entity could possibly survive in an economic world. If it will not, what is the good talking of negotiations. The only negotiation which Colonel Ojukwu wants is whole of West Africa today, except the the only thing that Nigerians cannot negotiate about, because, apart from the question of national pride, it is unthinkable that any future Nigeria should have a totally uneconomic, hostile, minute, enclave in the middle of its territory constantly reaching out to establish boundaries down to Port Harcourt, over lands where there are very few Ibos living. These are facts opposed to the dreams of many hon. Members on both sides.

Dr. John Dunwoody: Would the hon. Gentleman nevertheless accept that, even with the limited boundaries about which he speaks, Biafra would have a larger population than any other country in the whole of West Africa today, except the Federation of Nigeria?

Sir F. Bennett: I have more respect for the hon. Gentleman than to imagine that merely by counting heads he can disregard uneconomic circumstances. One can pick out areas in many parts of Asia. For instance, in the middle of India there are areas with large numbers of people who might like to break away, but everyone knows that they could not survive because they would be cut off from all forms of support, economically and otherwise. There is no limit to the theoretical fragmentation of any State anywhere in the world.
I come now to explain why I feel bound to support the Government. It


does not mean that I do not think that they could have done many things differently in the past. They would be rather arrogant if, looking back, they felt there were not many moments when they might have acted in a different way or achieved a different result. Yet I feel that on these benches tonight we must approach this problem on the basis: if we were in office tomorrow what would we do in this situation? This is the only fair way to approach the problem.
I think that the idea of going to the United Nations to try to get an arms embargo is excellent, but I do not believe that a Conservative Government would cut off all arms to the Nigerian Government.

Mr. Winnick: The right hon. Gentleman said so.

Sir F. Bennett: I do not believe that we would do that. I am justifying my attitude. I will not be put off by interruptions from an hon. Gentleman in a sitting position when he has already spoken. I am justifying what a Conservative Government would do. I do not believe that we would make any dramatic change in policy at this stage.
I should like to put forward a few reasons why I think we have no alternative but to go on with the present policy and, to some extent, even to increase our help and support to the Nigerian Government, although I do not go so far as those who talk in terms of sending them bombers and bombs.
First, no one has denied that the Russians are getting deep into the struggle. They have failed to get a foothold in many other parts of Africa, and this is the one chance they have of getting a secure base in the richest and potentially most powerful country in the whole of West Africa south of the Arab States. If we abandon such influence as we have, which a dramatic change of policy would bring about, the Russians would be only too eager to take up the slack and join in and play an even bigger rôle.
In this context, I cannot help feeling that this conflict is already bedevilled enough with some strange bed-partners and alliances. We do not want to go to the extent of increasing these bedevil-

lings. The bit of Red Chinese interest which exists in trying to help Biafra would show itself much more if the Russians were to come in even more. We should then have the odd position of the Red Chinese, the Portuguese, the French and, to some extent, the Vatican all on the same side. That is just one of the more unusual alliances we might find in the world. At the moment one of the most stabilising influences in the Nigerian conflict is the traditional British rôle which we can play, but which I think we could have played better now than before. Let us assume, therefore, that we are going to try to do that.
I come now to the humanitarian argument. I cannot see how restricting the supply of small arms and armoured cars, which are the most humane means of trying to win a ground war of this sort—which will mean that the Nigerian forces will be thrown back on using bombers supplied by the Russians—will help anyone. The great cry is that we do not want people to be bombed. But if we cut out the ground forces, and if we do not supply the ammunition and equipment for the Nigerian forces on the ground where they can be seen by international observers, and where the Nigerian generals can keep an eye on them, they will perforce resort to more bombing. It is said that we should stop supplying arms, but that we should turn a blind eye if the Russians continue to send in bombers. Hon. Members say that they want to stop the bombing; yet they seem anxious to put the Nigerians into the position where they cannot but resort to more bombing to retain their offensive. I cannot understand the reasoning behind those conflicting arguments.
It is said that if we stop supplying arms the war against Iboland is more likely to stop. This is not true. Iboland will still be conquered, for the reasons I have given. Even if the struggle becomes more embittered, and lasts longer, the same result will follow, but the conflict will be even more bloodthirsty and ruthless.
Those who have lived in Africa and who know Nigeria are aware that one of the most frightening things about Africa is the tribal feeling that simmers below the surface. There are deep historical tribal differences, compared with which some of the rifts in Europe seem like


child's play, and General Gowon is playing a notable part in preventing tribal troubles spreading. If he is cut off from his Western allies, there is every chance that these tribal hatreds will become even more ferocious. I have no doubt about the trouble which would result if General Gowon were cut off from his contacts with the West and had to turn to more unscrupulous friends.
Several of my hon. Friends have referred to British interests there. If I thought that the reality of the situation dictated that in the interests of bringing peace to the area British interests should be damaged, I would be the first to say that there is no doubt which way the scales would have to go, but as far as I can see, and if my previous arguments are right—and I cannot think that they can be faulted from a realistic point of view—we should do enormous damage to long-term and short-term British interests there, including our oil supplies in the event of another breakdown in the Middle East, if we were to change our present policy. I think I am right in saying that 11 per cent. of our oil comes from Nigeria, and that this is oil which Russia would very much like to get her hands on. If that were to happen, what would be the result in terms of employment in this country? No one thinks about that when suggesting action which might lead to a complete severance of our relations with Nigeria.
I come, now, to a matter which some hon. Members think is important, but which others like my right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) do not. Some people think that it is none of our business that a successful Biafran breakaway would be the biggest fillip to tribal fragmentation throughout the continent of Africa. I do not think we can dismiss that possibility and say that we have no responsibility for what happens, because we created these states, for better or for worse. All parties are responsible for creating states with artificial barriers.
Why is it that Kenya and Uganda are continuing to support the Nigerian Federal Government? Has no one thought about why they are taking that line? The reason is that if Iboland got away with what it is demanding there could be a series of tribal break-ups and fragmentations in Uganda and Kenya

which could spread throughout the whole of Africa.
I know this part of the world, and I know that these tribal factors are there just beneath the surface. We have in Jomo Kenyatta a ruler who has risen above all this and who knows the problems better than anyone else. If anyone thinks that this is a case of the white man supplying arms so that the black man can be killed he should go to Kenya, or Uganda, or any area where there are real tribal problems, and ask the people there what they want to see as a result of the Nigerian war.
It is noticeable that the most enthusiastic adherent of Biafra's course of action is Tanzania. She is one of the few African states which have very few tribal divisions within their boundaries.

Hon. Members: What about Zambia?

Sir F. Bennett: I am coming to that. I said that the most enthusiastic adherent was Tanzania. Although Zambia has taken action, I am not sure whether, in the light of the last elections which showed what was happening in Zambia and how in particular Barotseland voted, she would be quite so enthusiastic to see the situation develop in which the right to fragment belonged to any particular tribe. The state of affairs in Africa is one for which we cannot escape responsibility. We created modern Africa. However foolishly, however wrongly, we laid down frontiers which have no reality at all in economic terms, and certainly not in ethnological terms.
Ladies and Gentlemen—Mr. Deputy Speaker, I apologise for doubling your sex. We cannot give up our responsibility in that area of the world. I therefore say to the House that, for every reason that I can adduce after thinking over the matter deeply, we should support those of my hon. Friends who say that if we are honest we have no alternative but to support the Government's present policies, and this I have every intention of doing.

7.47 p.m.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: This is the first time that I have spoken in a debate on Nigeria and Africa. I feel rather like the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home). Throughout the whole of this conflict I have been a prey to a


variety of conflicting emotions. It is not usual for politicians to admit that they are never quite sure, that they are not quite certain where they stand, or what position they hold, but I think that I must be quite honest and say that up to now—and possibly even now—1 have never been absolutely certain which side is right and which side is wrong. I envy those who are certain about who is right and who is wrong. I wish that I had the same certainty that they have shown in debates in this House on this question.
I can see the sensible, intelligent, argument for having a Federal Nigeria with no breakaway State. I can understand this, but I can also understand the deep feelings of the Ibo or Biafran people that they have no future within the context of a Federal Nigeria and that they ought to have a separate State.
We are discussing the Government's policy and what action the Government should take. I feel that to some extent I have been conned by the Government. We were told that the Government's real endeavours in this matter were directed to trying to mediate, to trying to solve this question and bring it to a conclusion at the earliest possible moment. We were told this on numerous occasions, but the truth is that the Government are on the side of Federal Nigeria. It would have been much more honest and better for people like me to say from the start, "We have interests in Nigeria which we will defend by continuing to supply arms to Nigeria; we will defend our oil interests and Unilever will defend their interests in this way." We would then have known where we were and would have been able to make up our minds as to whether we were on the side of the Biafrans or that of the Federal Government. We were not faced with that proposition but with the idea that we were mediating. That was Government policy.
The traumatic experience for me was the discovery that a ship registered in Liverpool had left there for Lagos on a normal run, where it was commandeered by the Federal Government and used to transport a small number of troops and military vehicles to Port Harcourt. There was not a peep, not one word of disagreement, from the Government about Federal Nigeria's action. I wrote to the

Foreign Secretary about this matter, which came to light only because two Liverpool seamen refused to sail on the ship. They had signed articles from Liverpool to Lagos and then were told that they would get 100 per cent. bonuses if they sailed to Port Harcourt. They said that they had not come to sail in enemy territory or to transport troops in a civil war. So they were flown home. No great pressure was put on them, but they gave this to the world by telling me, their Member of Parliament, and I raised the matter. How many other ships on which seamen have not refused to sail have been used in this way?
If I were a Biafran I would conclude, in those circumstances, that if ships were being commandeered in this way, with no protest by the British Government, it showed that we were supporting one side again the other. I was told that under international law this was permissible because of the circumstances. But I should like to know whether any other ships have been used in this way and why no protest was made by the Government. Does this not show clearly that the Government are supporting one side? Yet we are told that our task is to mediate towards a cease-fire. That is not the way to mediate or to deal honestly with this matter.
It has been said in the debate that we had contracts with the Nigerian Government which we had to fulfil. Obviously, we should fulfil our obligations, but did we not make those contracts with a democratically elected Nigerian Government, which has since been overthrown by a military group? Since then, one or two other military groups have overthrown their predecessors. And people talk of legitimate Government. What legitimate Government is this, after this series of military coups? Whatever obligations we had with the original Government to some extent ceased the moment that the legitimate Government was overthrown. We must remember this. The situation is not the same today as when we signed the contracts and made the agreements. This makes the situation somewhat different from the explanation that we have been given, and this must be answered by the Government.
The other argument which has been used and which persuaded me a great deal


was my hon. Friend's remark, "By continuing to sell arms to the Federal Government we shall be able to use our influence to bring the war to an end fairly quickly." But it has gone on for 18 months, and that is why I feel that I have been "conned". Where has all this wonderful influence, which we have been having through the sale of our arms, left us? What have we achieved? Nothing. The war has intensified, civilians and children are now being bombed, and it has meant nothing. Because we did not mediate from the beginning, the Russians have now got in. After we had the ear of both sides but decided not to allow both sides to be heard properly, the Russians have come in and the situation has been complicated.
I am rather concerned about our policy now towards Nigeria, whereas previously I tended to go along with the Government and believed that perhaps they were doing the right thing. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) will remember that when he made his first speech in the House on this matter he summed up my attitude, as I believe I told him afterwards. His speech today was a little different, but it was only a shade of difference.
We surely cannot allow our Government's policy to continue in this way. Therefore, I will certainly not vote for the Government. I may well vote against them, depending upon the reply that we get from the Foreign Secretary. I hope that we shall not get some suggestion that because the Prime Minister is going to fly out there this will solve the problem. We have heard that sort of thing before and I want something far more tangible. I want the Government to say tonight that they are for the Federal Government and its military solution or that they will take steps to get a cease-fire as early as possible so that negotiations can take place and a final, genuine solution to this war can be found. My final decision will depend on the answers that we receive, but I cannot vote for a continuation of the Government's policy as it has been revealed up to now.

8.0 p.m.

Mr. David Crouch: This is a back benchers' debate. It was the back benchers who asked the Leader of the House to provide time to debate Nigeria, and I concede that the right hon.

Gentleman has been—I was going to say "generous", but perhaps that is too strong a term—helpful in recognising the strong feeling of hon. Members on both sides. I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for enabling us to have a debate without delay.
This is a back benchers' day because both Front Benches have for the past 18 months failed. They have failed me because, having sat through this debate and three previous ones on the subject, I still feel strongly, emotionally and bitterly about what has been happening in the Nigerian war and about the decision of Her Majesty's Government.
I recognise the difficulty of the decision which rests on the shoulders of the Foreign Secretary and his colleagues. I equally recognise the difficulty which rests on the shoulders of the occupants of the Opposition Front Bench. I believe, with all the sincerity, understanding and sympathy at my command, that both Front Benches have been absolutely, utterly and morally wrong in seeing this war supported by the supply of arms. I can no longer accept excuses from the Government about the rightness of assisting in the Nigerian civil war.
My hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Sir F. Bennett) put his point of view with sincerity. He knows the country well. I cannot accept his view because when he took his eyes off his notes and spoke about the supply of arms to the Federal Government by Her Majesty's Government he seemed, after referring to small arms and other weapons, to search for a word as he used the phrase "humane …". It was the word "killing" that caused him to hesitate. It is the humanity or lack of it that makes me pause in the breach and prevents me from supporting Her Majesty's Government. I would, therefore, not dream of supporting them because, morally, I cannot give them my support.
There is no morality in the arguments being deployed by the Government. They may protest that what they are doing is good diplomacy, but I recall being received by the former Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs and receiving answers from him. Along with a number of hon. Members from both sides of the House, I met the right hon. Gentleman about a year ago. He listened fairly to


what we had to say, and I am sure that he was disturbed in his conscience about his decision and the responsibility which he then bore for it. When he spoke to us I felt that I was listening not to the Secretary of State expressing his own views but to the views of the professional Diplomatic Service and Foreign Office advisers who were behind him.
Tonight I want to hear the Government led from the Front Bench and not from the Foreign Office. I want the Foreign Secretary to hear our views, to accept our reasoning and then to reason the matter out for himself, being aware of our distress about the continuance of the supply of arms in the assistance of a civil war which shows no sign of ending.
The decision of the Government may be good politics and the line they are following may be wise political strategy. Perhaps that is why there is some argument in the spread of Balkanisation in Africa, but what are we really talking about in this context? My hon. Friend the Member for Torquay will not accept the title "Biafra". Is he aware that this is the title assumed for this State by the leader of that country, which was the eastern region and which was set up 60 or 70 years ago by the Colonial Office?
The title "Biafra" is not wrong because we are not really speaking of Iboland. The last census of the area revealed a population of more than 12 million, larger than South Africa or Ethiopia. While all these wise arguments are being adduced, people are dying. They have been dying for the last 18 months, and this year another one million will die.
Last August, when we had an opportunity to debate this matter in the middle of the Summer Recess—the situation was so serious and the conscience of the nation so troubled that we had to return for that—we found a new phrase emanating and we thought that it might result in the Nigerian civil war coming to an end. We were ourselves engaged in supporting a policy of "quick kill", and that phrase has been used again today. I have no doubt that it is used with sincerity, but I cannot support such tactics.
I accept the arguments that have been adduced about British interests being involved and the fact that 16,000 British

subjects are living in Nigeria. Some of them live in Biafra. Some of my constituents are living there, and that is why I have been kept well informed on the subject. What new phrase will emerge from today's debate to quieten our consciences? Shall we be told that the Government are faced with a difficult situation? A statement of that kind would satisfy neither me nor the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer). It would not satisfy many hon. Members.
Her Majesty's Government have recognised the Federal Government of Nigeria; but what a Government! What caused the unnatural haste to recognise Colonel Gowon? How did he reach power? He was certainly not voted into power. He took office behind the barrel of a gun, and we recognised him with much too much haste. Who was the man who remained in command, appointed by the former Prime Minister of the Federation, by Ironsi, to lead the Eastern Region? It was Colonel Ojukwu. Why was not Colonel Ojukwu thrown over at the time when Ironsi was murdered? The reason is that the troops around Ojukwu remained loyal to the Federal Government—in other words, loyal to the only Government they knew—and they supported their Eastern Region leader and Prime Minister.
The Foreign Office and Colonial Office must know the background to this tragedy. They cannot, in truth, go on stating that one region has revolted, that Biafra is rebelling and must, therefore, be suppressed and destroyed. After all, on what sort of politics are we engaged? We are not right in assuming that we must support the Federal Government against the breakaway State of Biafra.
We must consider the whole history, certainly from the point of view of Britain, of the original Nigerian protectorates, how they were created about 70 years ago and how they emerged in 1900 when, for the first time, the word "Nigeria" was used to describe the Northern and Southern Protectorates and the Protectorate of the Colony of Lagos, as it then was.
This history points to the division which lies within the great confines of this large geographical territory. We not only know of the many different ethnic and tribal groups which exist in what we


call Nigeria today, but the Foreign Secretary knows only too well—because the history of all this is not that old—of the continuing divisions that have existed after 1900 and of the decision of the Colonial Office, as it then was, under the first Governor General, Lord Lugard, to establish separation, first between north and south and finally between north, west and east. In later years there was a movement towards smaller emergent states. I fear that we in this country fail to recognise that division has been the background to Nigeria's history for a long time.
There have been great differences among these three regions, and even more differences within these regions. It was our early rule which allowed those differences to develop, because it suited the then political management and rule of our Colonies to have the power here in Whitehall, and to have a weak central administration in what we now call Federal Nigeria and have the main body of civil servants in the regions themselves. There was very little transfer of senior civil servants and colonial servants between one region and another. The Civil Service itself grew up in the regions, but British rule of the time was the mainstay of stability.
British government, with all its faults, in the past has been a sound colonial ruler, but what it is not being sound in today is the development of the new Commonwealth of Nations. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser), who said that we are trying to support the wrong national boundaries. I agree with him that it is a false dream to go on trying to support the false boundaries which constitute the ideal of Federal Nigeria. The very breakaway that happened at the time of military government in 1966 and which precipitated this civil war had its seeds a long way back, not in the minds of young Sandhurst-trained officers now in the armies of Nigeria and Biafra. The seeds were sown much earlier at a time when we were establishing a type of rule for various regions in Nigeria.
I quote what the second Governor-General of Nigeria, Sir Hugh Clifford, Lord Lugard's successor, said in 1920:

Assuming, therefore, for a moment that the impossible were feasible—that this collection of self-contained and mutually independent native states were indeed capable of being welded into a single homogenous nation—a deadly blow would be struck at the very root of national self-government in Nigeria, which secures to each separate people the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and its nationality, its own chosen form of government, and the peculiar political and social institutions which have evolved for it by the wisdom and accumulated experience of generations of its forebears.
That was the second Governor-General, commenting, I think the House will accept, not only on the attitude of these peoples of Nigeria, but also on the pattern of our colonial rule of a group of nations which we accepted as a fact of constitutional life. There followed from this the development towards a constitution in Nigeria which was based all the time on separate regions. Never did we produce, unfortunately, a strong central legislature. Here I think was the seed of the present sad civil war: we did not succeed in leaving behind this unity of a central legislature which could have brought these three or four regions of Nigeria together.
Twenty-three years ago, in 1946, we set the stage for the struggle by regional political parties for power at the centre in the Richards constitution which was then drawn up. This inevitably has led to the disintegration of Nigeria which we now see taking place. When Nigeria got its independence in 1960 it was not ready for democratic government. Their approach to a democratic election as we understand it in 1964 was nothing more than a tragic farce. What followed from it immediately was corruption, graft, riots, arson, robbery, murder and the complete collapse of law and order.
This story of the struggle in Nigeria for power between these regions, seeking power at the centre of the Federation in a large country where the three main political groups come from the individual three main regions is the story of the rejection of honest democracy until the people were disgusted and the inevitable took place, a coup d'etat and murder of the Prime Minister, several other Ministers and senior officers of state. The further murder took place of Ironsi, and in the turmoil General Gowon appeared on the scene and took command at the centre.
There was an unnatural haste in recognising General Gowon and the legitimacy of his Government, because beneath it there was the fear that as he is a northerner, with the rooted fear of a great many years of history, at last the northerners would have the power they had always sought. Under a democratic constitution drawn up for them they had a legitimate power with a legitimate majority in the Legislative Assembly. But now, under a military Government, it was seen that this would mean the denial of all the things the Colonial Office of the past had tried to build into this group of nations, individual nationhood within a Federation. This looked like going.
There was a constitutional conference in September, 1966, at the beginning of the Gowon Government. It lasted four days and was then adjourned and General Gowon never called it together again. He did not get the agreement of Ojukwu and the Eastern Region. Then he produced his 12-State formula which would have produced the Balkanisation of which we should be afraid—of little non-viable States within the Federation in which the powerful North would be in control.
Why should we refuse to recognise the legitimate right of one of the great constitutional regions of Nigeria to stand up for its right to exist? It is our right as Members of Parliament to recognise that it has such human rights. What is the difference, when we are talking of war, between genocide and murder? It is still death if it is the death of only one person. There is no quick kill; just tragedy. These wrongs do not make any right. They give us no right to moralise about our correctness in supporting the Federal Government. We cannot keep up this pretence much longer. If not tonight, tomorrow or next week, we will stop the arms supply some day. We shall for ever regret this tragic decision and the black page which has been written on our history as a great nation.

8.18 p.m.

Mr. Philip Noel-Baker: Unless the Foreign Secretary announces a drastic change of policy before the House divides, I shall vote against the Government tonight. I shall do that with regret. There have been other issues

of foreign policy in which in recent years I have wished to take that step. Tonight I shall take it with the full conviction that I am right.
In May, 1967, the Government were faced with two movements for constitutional change in Africa. They were in countries which for many years had been under British rule. Both movements were called rebellions by their opponents. In Rhodesia a small minority of white settlers—about 5 per cent. of the population, but holding Government power—had rebelled against the British Crown. Their purpose was to guarantee the continued supremacy of the whites. They had moved—they are moving still—fast—towards apartheid. The Defence Correspondent of The Times, a much-respected nephew of the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home), wrote not long ago—
To be a black man in South Africa today is to be the victim of a discrimination as bad as. if not worse than, the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
Rhodesia is moving fast towards that Nazi goal.
In Nigeria a body of 12–15 million Africans, almost twice as numerous as the people of Sweden, belonging to various tribes but firmly united in the east, were demanding rights of local government and, in particular, rights of local self-defence, within a confederation of the four Nigerian regions which the British had set up. Millions of those easterners were refugees. They had been driven from their homes and from their jobs, and many had been killed. But they were still saying in May, 1967 to the Nigerians of the North and West: "Let us remain united as one nation with the closest economic and other ties. But since we differ in language, religion, education, social institutions, and in our recent history, let us have a measure of regional self-government, as some other countries do. In particular, in view of recent terrible events, let us have in each region our own police, our own militia, to maintain our own security and law and order within the confederation which we set up".
Faced with these two constitutional movements, the Labour Government made two decisions. On Rhodesia they said, "There can be no question of the


use of force to oust the Smith régime. The future constitution of the country must be settled by peaceful means. Force would lead to large-scale fighting. It would mean disaster for whites and blacks alike. More important, it could bring no lasting settlement of Rhodesian problems. It would only make matters worse."
That was the decision on Rhodesia which is adhered to still. I accept it. I think it is right. I think it is wise. I believe that the use of force would have been short-sighted, very dangerous, and very wrong.
But I wish the Government had said the same about Nigeria. On Nigeria the Government's decision was very different from that. They declared that Colonel Ojukwu was a rebel, that the unity of Nigeria must be maintained, that General Gowon should resort to force and that Britain would supply the arms. They even refused to see Ojukwu's envoy, the distinguished pro-British Sir Louis Mbanefo. I think that was a very grave mistake, for Mbanefo could have told them, as he told me, that fighting, if it started, would last long months or years; that if Biafra were beaten in the field, guerrilla war would follow on as in Vietnam; that Ojukwu was still against the use of force, that he was still ready to negotiate on reasonable terms.
Let me look a little closer at what the Government did in those fateful weeks. They refused to see Mbanefo—and nothing that I could do would make them change their minds. They scouted his suggestion of a lengthy war. They accepted Gowon's pledge that he could win by fighting within a matter of days. In July the Government of the United States refused Gowon's request that they should sell him arms. Kosygin had very recently been the guest of the Prime Minister in London. Nothing could have been more natural than for the Prime Minister to say, "I must work with the United Statss, as I have done on so many other matters where they were doubtfully right. I will work with the United States and I will invite Kosygin publicly to join in using the United Nations to secure a ban on arms to both sides from all sources, and a Nigerian conference that will bring a negotiated peace."
Alas, the Prime Minister did not do that. In August, after long reflection, disregarding the United States' decision,

he allowed new contracts for arms sales to Nigeria to be made. And large quantities of arms—alas, the Government do not tell us how many; they do not do what Labour Governments did in times gone by and publish details of all the exports of arms this country makes—large quantities have gone since then from Great Britain to Lagos and are going still.
There have been large quantities of arms, but they have not won the war. Very heavy losses have been inflicted in the battles by both sides. The flower of Nigerian manhood is being destroyed. Perhaps a million Biafrans have died of hunger, the most ghastly form of human torture. I know about it, for I worked for Dr. Nansen during the Russian famine in 1922.
This has happened, but the war has not been won. It may still be long. If the Biafran forces are beaten in the field, there will still be guerrilla warfare which may last for years.
The situation is like it was in 1967 in another way. Ojukwu has proposed a truce, to be followed by a ceasefire and by negotiations without any preconditions. On what possible grounds can Colonel Gowon refuse that offer? On what possible ground can the Government fail to support what Ojukwu has proposed?
My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State said today that the Government want the earliest possible peace. I accept that. We all do. Compared with that end, all other matters—international relief, observers, the bombing of civilians—are of secondary importance. I have a letter here written from Umuahia on 27th February which gives details of a long list of bombings, and the author, a respected British citizen, says that it is inconceivable that those bombings happen without a Government order from the high command in Lagos. As I say, relief, observers and bombings are all side issues compared with the ending of the war, and it would be disastrous if, important though they are, they were to divert attention from the main problem of how to bring the fighting to art end. Nothing really matters except that. Stop the fighting, and we have at least the hope of a united, prosperous, progressive Nigeria once more. But let the war go on to its bloody and still far off


conclusion and that hope will be extinguished, perhaps for ever.
I listen with amazement to those of my hon. Friends who argue that the war should be allowed to continue and that, in the end, a satisfactory solution will be found by victory for the Government in Lagos. I wonder whether they have ever heard that we have had two world wars. The first was the war to end all wars, but it created the very forces of militarism and the vast vested interests which smashed the League of Nations and made the second war. The Second World War was the war to make the world safe for democracy. If my hon. Friends think that it succeeded, let them read Lord Attlee's statement of war aims made in November, 1939, and compare it with what actually happened after 1945. They will see how war destroys the very things one wants to do.

Sir Charles Mott-Radclyffe: Sir Charles Mott-Radclyffe (Windsor) We all respect the right hon. Gentleman's views, but he must get history right. Is he suggesting that if Hitler had won the Second World War he and I would have been sitting in this Chamber today?

Mr. Noel-Baker: No, I am suggesting nothing of the kind. But what I should suggest, if I had time, is that Hitler could have been stopped at the disarmament conference in 1932 which the then Tory Government helped to destroy, and he could have been stopped again over Abyssinia, when the Tory Government appeased Mussolini instead of upholding the Covenant of the League of Nations.
I hope that the Government will do what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kinross and West Perthshire suggested this afternoon. I hope that they will take this matter to the United Nations. Let them sweep aside the sophistry that this is an internal matter which concerns the Government of Lagos alone. It is a ghastly precedent for Africa as a whole which is now going on. The sales by the great arms producing nations of armaments to carry on the war and the sales from the international rings make this a question of international peace which is eminently within the scope of the United Nations. Let the Government propose in the United Nations, in public session, that all member States—Russia, France and the United States and all the rest—should stop the

sale of arms from every source, should use their navies and should control their airports and seaports to promote that end.
It is gallant of the Prime Minister to suggest that he will go to Lagos, but I fear that, like one of his predecessors who went to Munich, he will do very little good. Let him go instead to the Security Council, as Mr. Chamberlain should have gone to Geneva on Sir Winston Churchill's advice in 1938. Let the Prime Minister go to the Security Council and propose a universal ban on arms. I believe that he would stop this war, and, perhaps, with one war ended, other wars might end as well.

8.34 p.m.

Mr. Ronald Bell: To too many people, including the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mr. Philip Noel-Baker), this is an unquestioning campaign, controversy and debate about a notional Biafra, whereas it should be about Nigeria as a whole, and about Britain. We have been subjected to a deluge of propaganda, to which hon. Members on both sides have referred. We have read and heard horrific reports about bombing, which, I regret to say, one could read or hear about in the case of any war in any part of the world. Therefore, it becomes necessary to say that whoever is bombing what it is not with British aeroplanes or British bombs.
The hope of international arms control has been widely canvassed, and the right hon. Member for Derby, South concluded his speech with an appeal for it. We should all like to see it, but I cannot recollect any occasion when such a system has been operated successfully. Certainly, the Near East is no example of it.

Mr. Philip Noel-Baker: The war in the Chaco was stopped by an arms ban in 1934.

Mr. Bell: The right hon. Gentleman can no doubt tell me about that afterwards. It is not one that I have ever heard of. Where such control has been attempted on a major scale it has been marked by a conspicuous lack of success. The Near East offers no encouragement for such an attempt in the future. Such a ban merely gives an advantage to those who do not join in.
That being so, the proposal must be that Britain on her own initiative, and, in effect, alone, would deny arms to a Common wealth Government. For so remarkable an action I have discovered only four arguments. The first consisted of the allegations of genocide, which I think nobody now persists in—not even The Times—and which have been disowned by all impartial observers, and which I think arose as pure partisanship on the basis that, "Our side is losing, casualties are heavy, and this must be genocide".
The second was the deliberate bombing of civilian objectives. Here again, the evidence is remarkably weak. To say that, because an Egyptian pilot has hit a hospital with a bomb he was aiming at the hospital, is a logical leap which lacks inevitability. Like one of my hon. Friends, I can think of many reasons why an Egyptian pilot would drop his bombs over a civilian area, where there are less likely to be anti-aircraft guns, than over a strictly military target.
If it be said, as the third argument, that at any rate this amounts to indiscriminate bombing, as indeed it does, I fear that, like the hon. Member for Bosworth (Mr. Wyatt), one must point out that our conception of a military target in the last war was one that permitted the destruction which I and many others saw in German cities after the war was over. And the German conception of a military target was one that permitted the destruction of our cities in a way that we all saw.
The fourth reason, which is less often avowed but is perhaps the most real, is that a good many people in this country know and like the Ibos, or are coreligionists with them. This is not a consideration to be brushed aside. There is room in life for such loyalties, but they cannot be over-riding considerations, as they have been allowed to become.
Therefore, when the situation is rightly appraised in any reasonably wide perspective, there is no special reason which would justify so sharp and fateful an act as the denial of arms to a Government within the Commonwealth. This is the view of the majority of African States and the majority of Governments throughout the world. It is also, I am happy to observe, the view of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kinross and West

Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home), whose judgment in these matters I greatly respect. The reality, as I think everyone knows, is that there has been a massive propaganda campaign such as few hon. Members of the House have experienced before. Secondly, there has been a massive intervention by the Government of France in Nigeria.
I do not complain about the propaganda campaign. People are entitled to press their views by all means at their disposal, and this one has been very largely based upon the very strong denominational religious interests which are at stake. Again, they are entitled to do that, and The Times, which is the mouthpiece of one of these denominations, is entitled to make a corresponding effort. I do not complain. My own Church, the Church of Scotland, undertook a similar operation when Nyasaland was an issue. It was committed up to the neck in Nyasaland. On that occasion, I felt a certain feeling of loyalty to my Church, but I retained the freedom to examine and discriminate and eventually disagree with it.
Frence is deeply involved in this episode and is so in a specifically anti-British operation. No one should underestimate the vigour or the value of de Gaulle's linguistic and cultural campaign. The amused contempt with which some regard it is in itself a form of naivety. President de Gaulle is interested in the tribal fragmentation of a large and viable country based on British tradition and the English language, which, if it flourishes, will overshadow the little ex-colonies of France in West Africa.
We are going to finish up with enemies all around and no friends if everyone indulges his special interest at the cost of the national interest. Her Majesty's Ministers, however ineptly, have in this case had some regard for the general interest of Britain. I say "ineptly", because they ought, having decided to support the Federal Government, to have supported them effectively, and thereby shortened immensely the war and reduced the casualties which have ensued.
In these circumstances, and taking that view, I naturally have to consider what I am going to do at the end of the debate. One has to bear in mind here that thrusting French initiative which is developing in Nigeria. One has to remember the


shadow of Russan ambitions which lies over Nigeria. Is it thinkable that we should pull out and leave these two to resolve the future of Nigeria as a tug-of-war between them? Is is thinkable that we should pull out and stop supplying arms, leaving the 16,000 British subjects in Federal Nigeria to whatever consequences that might bring to them? Is it. indeed, for that matter thinkable that we should sacrifice the vast British material interests which are also at stake in Nigeria?
In relaxed matters, when, upon a balance of factors, one arrives at the conclusion that a Government composed of one's political opponents is acting in the national interest, one discharges one's duty by saying so and leaving the burden on them. But when the going in defence of that interest is rough, when there are inflamed sectors of public opinion, and when there is odium to be incurred by resisting heavy pressures, then I do not find on the sidelines a position worthy of my responsibility. I assume that the Foreign Secretary will maintain the Government's policy and not prepare the way for retreat. Subject to that, if there should be a vote tonight, I shall take part in it.

8.45 p.m.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: I am grateful for an opportunity to speak for the first time in a debate on Nigeria. I have just returned from a visit to both sides in this tragic war. I came back about three weeks ago.
I have formed certain conclusions about what we ought to do in relation to our policy towards Nigeria which I know the House will find controversial; but before I come to them I want to lay the groundwork by stating what we saw when we were in both Biafra and Nigeria in order that there can be at least ascertainable facts upon which rational discussion of the issue can take place. Never before in all the time I have been interested in politics have I seen a question so bedevilled by propaganda as this one is. Despite the tragedy of the deaths that have taken place, it remains true that in this war in Biafra propaganda is more important than bullets and that to get away from propaganda and down to the reality of the issues is a first prerequisite of anybody who has to make up his mind about it.
I chose to go with my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr. Barnes) because we had taken different views about this issue before and because I thought it desirable that we should be able to compensate each other's prejudices so that we could get some kind of impartial and reliable basis for discussion. We also agreed that it would be useless to go unless we went to both sides. It is there, I believe, that the account of Mr. Winston Churchill in The Times is so deficient—not that he did not go to Lagos, for he did. But in order to give the kind of account about this situation that is really full and complementary one has to do the investigation in depth, in Lagos and in Nigeria as a whole, that he did in Biafra.
What he saw in Biafra I saw in Biafra, and I do not disagree with the actual incidents he recounts. But on the conclusions to which he comes and the inferences to be drawn from the facts I disagree, simply because I have had the opportunity of discussions with a number of people who are very well informed on the Federal side, and because I have taken into account the evidence brought back from the Federal side by those hon. Members of the House who were there last year and have been there since.
It is important that one should bear this difficulty in mind, because the tragedy of this war is that, whatever the historical context in which it is set—which it is absolutely vital to know before one comes to a decision—the fact remains that things have changed on both sides in the two years of the war, and that neither side fully appreciates the changes that have taken place in the other part of Nigeria. The Nigerians do not realise the intensity of feeling at every level of the people in Biafra about their own security, and their fears for survival if the Federal régime wins. That is intense, genuine and real, not only with Colonel Ojukwu and his clique. The clique represents the feelings and opinions of everybody in Biafra.
I asked at every level and everybody gave me the same reply: they did not want to go back to one Nigeria because they or their family, in the extended family situation there had suffered so terribly in the killings that took place in 1966 or in the war itself. That feeling is intense. When I asked at an old people's feeding station where there were only 600


old men, whom one would expect to be tired of the life in the war, the shortages and lack of food: "Do you want to go back to one Nigeria?" they nearly lynched me. These old men all expostulated with one shout. That is the feeling. In order to put that into its proper context one has to ask whether the feeling is justified.
I am bound to say from the available evidence that it is not the case. There are four million Ibos living in the Federal territory now. They live there unmolested and without any discrimination against them. They live full viable lives. There are people at every level of government and trade and business, and they are still living as they did before the war. There are places in Ibadan, for instance, where the Ibo owners of houses left when the killings took place in 1966 and went to Iboland. The rents for those houses are being collected in their names and the money put into bank accounts so that the bank accounts will be available to them when they return. The feeling is sincere but unjustified.
The tragedy of the situation is that the Biafrans do not realise what has happened in Federal Nigeria. Here I take great issue with what was said by the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch). The major change in the situation on the Federal side since the war began is that the old power structure has been broken finally and for ever. Everywhere we went among the leaders in Biafra they asked us: "What is the good of our negotiating with fellows like Arikpo and Enahoro? They are only minority tribes. They do not control anyone. They do not represent anyone. We know that the Federal régime is controlled from the north as it was before the war by the Sardauna of Sekota and his co-emirs". The truth is that they do not control the situation.
The breakdown of the three major tribal units into 12 States has effectively destroyed the hegemony of the Hausa-Fulani and the Yoruba, and the Ibo, when they are brought back into the Union. There is now a place for minorities, There is now a place for anyone on the basis of his ability, not on the basis of his relationship to the dominant groups. This was the thing that we as a colonial Power ought to have brought about 20 years ago. We

rested for too long on the major basis of power. The truth is that within a united Nigeria there is a better hope for the Ibos than they have ever had in the past, and they could ever have within the little postage-stamp that might be theirs within an independent Biafra. But this situation has to be decided by the people on the spot.
One of the major complaints about this whole discussion is the moral arguments of some of those who partake in it. They say: "This is war. Therefore, we must stop war, because this is the Africans playing with weapons that they do not understand". These men are intelligent and articulate, on both sides; men of compassion and dignity and calibre whom I would be proud to call my friends. Yet they see the situation in a different light. They are fighting the fight that the North and the South fought in the Civil War. They are fighting a fight vital to the development of Africa.
Every African State is faced with this problem. If there is a case for the Ibo, then there is a case for the Baganda, there is a case just as strong for the Lozi in Barotseland and there is a case for the Luo in Kenya. This precedent, if the Ibos succeed, will be followed throughout Africa. I accept that these boundaries were determined by European colonisers. I accept that they are artificial, but so are our boundaries. Every Western European State is created out of a section which was finally controlled by the Military. In the initial period it had no relation to the dominant tribal unit of the area. It took us 400 to 500 years to grow into nationhood. The African States will have to do it in tens of years. It is vital that in that process they should be secure from the threat of tribal disintegration.
The future of the Ibo children, about whom we are so concerned, is a future within a rich, viable unit of a united federal union. That is what the federalists are fighting about. It is not an arid concept which they put up against a fervent belief of the Ibos in their own survival. It is of real concern that this great unit of tremendous economic potential, which can give a full life to the people in a developing country, should be held together if it is possible. Is it possible?
I have listened with the deepest respect to the right hon. Member for Kinross


and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home) in his suggestions regarding the way in which the political negotiation might be begun. I do not think this is on. We went with the intention of finding some way of bringing about a negotiated settlement. If I could have done that I would have been delighted, whatever the result—whether it meant two Nigerias or one—but we could not do it because there is no basis for a negotiated settlement.
I take what my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Frank Allaun) said one stage further. I asked Colonel Ojukwu what he meant by "commonwealth", which is what he says he would accept in negotiation. He said:
It does not mean a Nigerian commonwealth of which we are part, as such. It means a degree of co-operation between two peoples. Certain things I will not risk. First, I have seen what armed force can do. Never again will I put our reliance on outside organisations.
There is no room in his thinking at the negotiating table for a union within which there would be armed forces not under the control of Biafra. There is no room for a settlement in which an independent organisation would have to be relied on for their security.
As he explained to us, "There is only one way, and that is that we should be separate. We may have common services; we may grow together in later years. There are ties of geography and background, but initially there must be a split." If that is the case and the case for the Federals is the exact opposite—both of them honest, intelligent appraisals of their situation—there is no meeting of minds that would create negotiation.
Though I much regret it, we have to look for a way of ending this tragic war as quickly as possible, with the minimum amount of stress and bitterness. This has to be overcome in the re-integration of the Ibos in a united Nigeria.
There are only three alternatives for British policy. The first is that we do what some of my hon. Friends suggest—abandon the arms policy. The arms policy is not the most important stance of the British Government as far as Biafra is concerned; even more important is a change in our diplomatic support for Federal Nigeria. If we are to do that, then Biafra will win. If we are to bring

about a ceasefire, then Biafra has won. If one believes that it is in the best interests of Nigeria and Biafra that Biafra should win, then one takes that course. I do not take that course. Even if we did change our stance I do not think the war would come to an end. The Biafrans are receiving arms from the French, about which General de Gaulle says he knows nothing. He says he would sign an arms embargo tomorrow because he says he knows nothing about it. Arms are flown out from Libreville airport under the eyes of the French officials, but General de Gaulle says, "I do not know anything about it". The Biafrans would get their weapons and so would the Federal Nigerians, because they can get them through the same black market sources. They can get them from Russia and other parts of the world.
The same is true if we continue our present policy: the war goes on. I was bombed four times while I was there, but I was never terribly worried about my physical safety because these bombing raids are ludicrous by Western standards of bombing. One plane comes over each day and drops three or four bombs. Inevitably, because the bombing is indiscriminate, the bombs sometimes hit a collection of people in a market place and severe injuries are done. I do not think the bombing has any military purpose. It only adds to the propaganda war for the Biafrans. It is totally meaningless and totally inhuman, and I hope that it will be stopped. That is something that we can do. But we cannot go on supplying arms at the level at which we are supplying them now and hope for a quick military solution to this war.
We did not see the front; we got accounts of it from people who were heavily biased in favour of the Biafrans, but their evidence is probably acceptable. They say that where the war is fought with normal small arms, like machine guns and rifles, there is a movement of a mile here or a mile there, backwards and forwards, but it is virtually stalemate. But when the Saladins and Ferrets come, there is a movement by the Nigerian troops because the Biafrans have nothing to put against them. In their enclave, where they can be supplied only by air, they will never have anything to put against the Nigerians.
This war is fought on the roads, and the movement goes on on the roads. It takes place over the urban areas. Then there is a movement back of the troops. There is only one urban area left in the Biafran enclave. I am sure that if the roads were taken, if Umuahia were taken and the other urban roads were taken, this war would be over. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I do not believe that there would be guerrilla fighting. This is not North Vietnam adjacent to China, with a feeding of arms. This is an enclave totally surrounded by Federal troops. There is no way of getting in arms except by means of the airstrip. If the airstrip falls to the Federal régime, the supply of arms stops. There will be a certain amount of unrest, but it will gradually die down.
Then comes the major political issue for us to decide. Given that situation, can the Ibos be re-integrated into a federal union? Will they not be so bitter that they will never be re-integrated? Examples of partition have been given None of them was good because in Pakistan, India and Ireland there was always exacerbation of the existing problem between the two units who were abrasive to each other. But in the United States, where they had this problem and where they fought for four bitter years, with all the repercussions, they have absorbed the bitterness and have grown into one great unit. I hope that that will happen in Nigeria.

9.4 p.m.

Mr. Richard Wood: It is barely three months since we had our last debate on the civil war in West Africa. Between then and now the totality of suffering has been in no way assuaged. New dimensions have been added to military operations there, and, by far the most relevant to our debate, the moral dilemma, of which we are all conscious, has grown far more disturbing even than it was last December or late last summer.
We are all glad that the Leader of the House agreed to the demand for this debate this week. The impatience for it has been obvious, and anyone who has listened, as I have, to most of the speeches can have been left in no doubt of the real disquiet felt by a number of hon. Members on three scores. The first

is the inability of this country so far to play an effective part in bringing the war to an end. The second is the anxiety about the adequacy or otherwise of existing efforts, important as they are, to bring aid to the wounded and those suffering from disease or dying of starvation. But the third and most obvious anxiety, which to some extent we all share, lies in the vicarious association which some believe to exist with the misery now being suffered in West Africa through our supply of arms to the Federal Government.
Earlier today, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home) spoke about the need for one more supreme international effort to achieve reconciliation. We have waited all day and we still wait for the Foreign Secretary to reply, and he will realise by now that we expect a great deal from him. I do not know whether we shall hear of some new initative or whether he will tell us about the Prime Minister. Whatever it is, I hope that he will tell us before about five minutes to ten. Above all, I hope that he will reply in full to my right hon. Friend's suggestion.
Even with the reported wish of Colonel Ojukwu for a ceasefire, all of us are only too well aware, as was clear from a number of speeches towards the end of the debate, of the obstacles which such an effort would have to overcome. We have the depressing evidence of past failures, in spite of the energetic attempts of the O.A.U., the Commonwealth Secretariat, Her Majesty's Government and many individuals to define the basis for a possible agreement. But the essence of the problem is the present apparent incompatibility of the rival demands, for sovereign independence on the one side, and the insistence on unity, loose though it might be, on the other.
However strong our desire to bring the war to an end and our determination to do everything in our power to make that possible, my hon. Friend the Member for Surbiton (Mr. Fisher) made clear that the yawning gap between the demands for Biafra and the Federal Government still widely separates the hope of a ceasefire from the achievement of peace. This is relevant to the speech made by the hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Frank Allaun).
None the less, I believe that a ceasefire would be welcomed by all and could be constructive if, though it is a big "if", effective methods could be devised for preventing the use of a lull in the fighting for preparation for further hostilities. But if, and so long as, each side continues to believe that the conflict of principle between them can be decided by military force, surely they are bound to question the wisdom of abandoning that bloody method and substituting for it negotiation which, if successful, must involve some kind of compromise which neither side yet seems willing to accept.
At the time of our last debate in December the military deadlock seemed to me to be depressingly complete. It is hard to judge, thousands of miles away as we are, how complete that deadlock is today. We in this country have to be guided by the testimony of eye-witnesses in West Africa, and even eye-witnesses always find it difficult to assess what might be called the "invisibles" of war, such as morale, the ability to suffer, or the will to win, on which to a very large extent the conflict in West Africa appears to depend.
Here I found myself in disagreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Surbiton. On the whole, it does not seem foolish to assume that many months of bitter fighting, many thousands of human beings destroyed and mutilated, and thousands of others diseased and dying, lie between this moment and the attainment of a possible Federal victory.
Therefore, if we are in earnest about bringing this war to an end as soon as possible, it is likely to be done only while the two armies are in a state of military deadlock. If the deadlock were complete, I have often wondered since December, whether this would be so depressing as I thought then. If both sides became convinced that the issue of unity or secession was no longer susceptible to a military solution, might it not in crease the possibility of compromise and the willingness to work out a new political framework?
Incidentally, I was relieved to hear the Leader of the Liberal Party, after sketching his blueprint for Nigeria's future, admit that the task was for the Nigerians, not for us in this House.
Such a conviction on the part of the contestants in West Africa may still be distant. Who can tell? It may be nearer than we think. But the possibility—even the certainty—that the rival leaders in this civil war will one day judge the conference table potentially more fruitful than armed attack must commend the wisdom not only of my right hon. Friend's proposal for a "supreme efford towards conciliation", but also of a continuing readiness to help in the massive task of reconstruction, material, social, political, and in every other way, as soon as the sterility of continued military conflict has laid the necessary first foundation for such rebuilding.
From reports that we read, the present distress in Nigeria through starvation and disease is little less serious than we feared it would be three months ago. A great deal has been done. The Government have made contributions for relief, and the Under-Secretary announced welcome new additions this afternoon. In addition, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, many charitable organisations are helping.
Although the issue of independence or secession is properly one for Nigeria to settle, the experience of human suffering on the scale that now exists as a result of this war is one from which the world cannot, and will not, turn away. Britain and other countries long to do more. We can all see that the situation will grow far worse if we are not allowed to provide more help. Yet Colonel Ojukwu is said still to refuse a corridor of relief, because he apparently fears that such a corridor could facilitate a Federal military attack. We all hope that the possibility of Obilagu, which the Under-Secretary mentioned this afternoon, may materialise.
One of the tragedies of the situation is our apparent inability so far to convince Colonel Ojukwu of the comparative simplicity of arrangements for the protection and supervision of such a land corridor in a way that would effectively guard it against risk of military misuse. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will tell us what approaches have been made to the Biafran leaders with a view to securing the right to provide international protection for such a corridor, and what was their reply. Of all the means of


relief, this method seems far the most effective, as well as the easiest to provide and to secure.
Without it, without day flights, and with night flights subject to considerable hazard and interruption, the tonnage of available supplies has never risen anywhere near the lowest minimum of need. Obviously the new route of relief would need supervision. Observers at the reception point would have to be allowed responsibility for inspection of cargoes. We are anxious to know also from the Foreign Secretary whether Colonel Ojukwu is likely to be willing to allow international observers, as my right hon. Friend asked, to be stationed in Biafra.
Their presence in that country would be invaluable for other reasons. One of our difficulties at the present time is that we receive what we believe to be objective information from observers invited by the Federal Government, but it is extremely hard for us to assess the objectivity of information from Biafra; and where the objectivity is not in doubt, it is harder still to assess the expertise of that information. We believe that dispatches from half a dozen international trained observers would help immeasurably in the evaluation of the reports that we are now receiving.
When the Foreign Secretary replies we hope to hear from him what means of contact he has with Colonel Ojukwu, what information he has about his willingness to accept observers, and, in general, what steps can now usefully be taken to free, and vastly to increase, the supplies of food and other necessities which this country and others long to send to the relief of hundreds of thousands who are suffering—diseased, mutilated, and hungry.
They are suffering in Nigeria as well as in Biafra, but it is the sufferings in Biafra, which for various reasons, have most uncomfortably stirred the emotions of people in this island and, perhaps as Sir Bernard Fergusson wrote yesterday, have divided us as we have not been divided since the invasion of Egypt twelve years ago.
The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Liberal Party said that we are wholly united in our desire to bring an end to the war. We are also united, I believe, in our longing to secure freer entry for the relief that we want to send;

and I think that it is largely because we are forced, in those two respects, to stand on the sidelines and watch in impotence an agony that we can neither stop nor effectively relieve, that we are inevitably, and I think probably rightly, driven to search for some action that we can take, some possible means that would make things better, or at the very least would refrain from adding to the misery.
It was ten years ago that we carried responsibility for the welfare of Nigeria; and that country's independence in 1960 was welcomed by all shades of opinion in Britain. We all watched the early years of the new Federation, first with hope, but later with anxiety, and I think that it is because of our long colonial connection with the territory that we feel a far closer involvement in this civil war than we should in any other possible civil wars in other parts of the world.
Our acute anxiety and distress in the face of the reported slaughter of men, women and children are the more painful because of these recent connections. Moreover, the conviction that we are in some way implicated, through our arms supply to the Federal Government, with this hideous slaughter and consequent suffering transforms this anxiety and distress into emotions which are still more painful.
A number of hon. Members have declared their conviction that we should ourselves unilaterally cut off the supply of arms. My right hon. Friend, in urging a further attempt to secure international agreement to cancel all arms, expressed himself firmly against such unilateral action. I take it that the Foreign Secretary will include in his reply, which we were assured would be a full one, a reply to the specific proposal made by my right hon. Friend. No one under-estimates the difficulties of securing, or policing, a total ban, but it is the objective for which we must now again work, and continue to do so.
Yet today we are far from such an agreement. Some hon. Members who have spoken are wholly pessimistic about achieving one, and those who follow the view of my right hon. Friend are deeply divided from those who would stop the supply of arms from Britain. This division is a reality—there is no doubt about it—but it would be quite wrong to think that all common ground


had meanwhile disappeared. I believe that those who oppose the continued supply of arms understand well the arguments of those who believe it to be necessary, and I am even more certain that those who continue to support the present policy understand and sympathise with the arguments of those who find it repulsive. This, I suppose, is hardly surprising, because the differences between us are almost inevitably the reflections of the differences within each of us. I can speak only for myself, but I imagine that many other hon. Members have similarly wrestled with their own divided counsels.
On the one hand is the urge to cut off the arms supply, to relieve our troubled consciences by the knowledge that we had done all we could to remove ourselves even from indirect participation in this bloody civil war. But, if we heeded this counsel, do we expect to win for our consciences the luxury of untroubled calm? What difference would the ban make to the realities in West Africa? Would the bombing cease? My hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Sir F. Bennett) argued powerfully in the opposite direction when he suggested that restriction of arms for land warfare would have the effect of stepping up the air bombardment. Would the suffering in West Africa grow less and the end of the war be brought one moment nearer?
My right hon. Friend drew attention to the effect on relations between Britain and Nigeria of such a unilateral ban. Certainly, whatever the course and duration of the civil war, Nigeria will play an important part in the future of the African continent. The ban which some see as the means by which we could assume the mantle of neutrality would be seen by others as the abandonment of neutrality, and many would conclude that by attempting to opt out we had taken sides. They would say that, having built up in Nigeria a military dependence on Britain, we then withheld the arms on which we had created that dependence and had, therefore, taken sides against the principle of unity and for the right to secede. We should bear much responsibility if, through the best of intentions in Nigeria, we took steps which led ultimately to disintegration throughout the continent of Africa.
What of the reactions of Soviet Russia? Do we expect that Russian consciences will suddenly quicken if the supply of arms and ammunition from Britain runs dry? Certainly, Russian consciences seem a great deal less troubled than many here tonight. Like the hon. Member for Bosworth (Mr. Woodrow Wyatt) I find it impossible to count as gain for peace in Nigeria the substitution of Russian weapons for British; or to count as gain for the future stability of Africa and the future peace of the world the inevitably greater dependence on the Soviets of a large and important African State.
For while Nigeria and Biafra are fighting over the issue of unity or secession, the greater Powers at their side have inevitably been drawn into a wider struggle, one aspect of which is the first attempt of Soviet Russia to build a position of influence on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. The bloodshed and suffering in West Africa rightly appal us and behind them lurks the danger of a wider disintegration across the African continent; but beyond even this, it seems to me, lies a wider threat to the stability of the world. By denying arms now to the Federal Government and thus opening the way for Soviet Russia to occupy the vacuum, I believe that we should simultaneously have opted out of an important part in this wider struggle. My fear is that this might ultimately load our consciences in the years to come with a far greater weight than lies upon them now.

9.24 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Michael Stewart): We have had a debate in which right hon. and hon. Members have spoken with great breadth of knowledge and great depth of feeling. There have been some bitter passages in the debates, but I believe that we are now, at the end of it, all in the mood to accept that this is a question on which humane, well-intentioned and well-informed people can form very different conclusions and that we shall get nowhere if we start accusing others with whom we disagree of being callous, hard-hearted, immoral or hypocritical. We must try to do better than that.
This cannot be represented as an argument between the humane and the moral


on the one hand and the hard-hearted realpolitiker on the other. We are aware—the right hon. Member for Bridlington (Mr. Wood) described this—of the struggle that is going on within us all; that there are issues of right and wrong actually struggling with each other on this question. This is what indeed makes it a tragedy—this conflict of rights and of feelings of morality.
The situation in the end means that one must make a judgment knowing that when one has made it, although one will stick firmly to it one is bound to do so with some distress and regret. I believe that this is in the minds of us all. However, it does not remove from us the necessity to make a firm decision, despite the distress and regret that it may cause.
It is in that spirit that I wish, first, to try to state the essentials of the problem and the essentials of Government policy, and, secondly, to take up what I think have been the two main presentations by the House to the Government. They are, first, the question of what steps we can take in the interests of humanity to bring this war nearer to a conclusion, and, secondly, the plain question of what we should do about the supply of arms.
Anticipating the main course of my argument, and in response to a point made by the right hon. Member for Bridlington, I will say a word about initiatives and steps to end the war, though I shall have more to say about this later. I believe that the House will accept that if we are to take such steps we must keep closely in touch with the Nigerian Government; otherwise it will simply be an empty exercise.
It is to be expected, therefore, that at some stage there will be a meeting of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister with the Prime Minister of Nigeria. [Interruption] It was well known and it was public knowledge at the time of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference that such a meeting might occur. Indeed, I can tell the House that there is to be such a meeting. [Interruption.]
The details of the meeting have not yet been arranged, and I should have been entirely happy, as would my right hon. Friend, to have left any announcement of this until later. However, in view of the questions that have been put by hon. Gentlemen opposite and in view of

what has already been made public knowledge, I am now confirming for the House that this is a correct report.
In the course of the debate it has been urged on us that we should take initiatives to end the war. Those who have asked that presumably know that if it is to be done to any purpose there must be consultation between Her Majesty's Government and the Federal Government of Nigeria. It is not reasonable, that request having been made—indeed, it is ungenerous and departs from what I said at the beginning of my speech about the mood of the House—for us to be asked to try to take initiatives to end the war and then for it to be assumed that anything that may be necessary in the course of that is adopted merely for the purpose of influencing the debate. If there are hon. Members who really advance that argument, they are thinking and speaking unworthily and out of tune with the general mood of the House.
While I wish to take up what I said at the outset about dealing with the essentials of the problem, I should, perhaps, first say that the immediate occasion of the debate is the natural concern of the House about the bombing in the rebel-held territory in Nigeria.

Mr. Frank Allaun: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Stewart: No, I think not. [HON. MEMBERS: "Give way."] It may be possible for me to give way later, but to do so just at the beginning breaks the line of argument. [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Stewart: I have listened to the greater part of this debate and I think the House wishes to hear what I have to say.
The Under-Secretary of State, who opened the debate, on the question of bombing, stated very clearly our refusal to condone and our condemnation of indiscriminate bombing. He further detailed the instructions given by General Gowon to his officers, the determination of the Nigeria Government to proceed most resolutely against any officer guilty of disobedience of these orders. That is one point which has been established. It has also been brought out during the debate—and this is an unhappy fact we


must realise—that the bombing of civilians has not in the course of this war been confined to one side.
I say that not because one set of cruelties excuses another, but for the reason that I do not think all hon. Members have fully realised that there are a number of Africans who notice the great concern about the recent bombing of civilians in rebel-held territory and are saying, "Where were the consciences of these Europeans when the hospital at Ore was bombarded by the rebels? Where were the consciences of the Europeans when there was bombing on Lagos and repeated incidents of this kind at the beginning of the war?" When we weigh up all this, the conclusion we have to come to, and which was voiced by a number of hon. Members, is that we know very well that if there is war at all there will be cruelties inflicted on innocent people, whether deliberately or through recklessness, or sometimes inevitably in the mere course of warlike operations. This will be true whether the war is waged by land, sea or air.
Our real concern, therefore, if we are concerned—and who is not?—about the suffering caused by the bombing, must be to try to bring the war to an end. I wanted to say that about the bombing but I will now gladly give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Frank Allaun).

Mr. Frank Allaun: I am most grateful to the Foreign Secretary. He had just referred to the initiative that the Government will take to obtain peace. When the Prime Minister goes, will he press the Federal Government for a ceasefire without pre-condition, because this is the key to a settlement?

Mr. Stewart: I ask my hon. Friend to exercise a little patience. I shall come later to what I believe can be achieved. I now ask the House to consider for a few minutes what I call the essentials of the problem.

Mr. John Mendelson: Before leaving the question of the bombing, because this point has been made by many hon. Members, is my right hon. Friend not asking the Federal Government for a cessation of these bombing raids as they have been proved wholly

indiscriminate by every eye-witness on the scene?

Mr. Stewart: What we have urged on the Federal Government is that they must take every possible measure—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I have been asked a question and hon. Members must listen to the answer. I am told that my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East admitted that airstrips were a legitimate target for bombing. We should bear that in mind before we say that there ought not to be any bombing at all. What we have urged on the Federal Government is that in one way or another they must stop the result occurring of the indiscriminate killing of innocent people.
I ask the House now to consider what I call the essentials of the problem. Here it cannot be said too often that this is a problem affecting Nigeria and Africa as a whole. There have been some references to the boundaries or existence of Nigeria. We should remember this. When Nigeria came to dependence she was accepted without cavil by every nation in the Commonwealth as a fit member of the Commonwealth and by every nation in the United Nations as a fit member of the United Nations. She was not regarded as an artificial, ramshackle creation, but as a genuine State. That is a fact that we cannot set aside.
In the light of that, we must all accept how serious a principle is raised if it is suggested that a particular people out of the many peoples of Nigeria should be able to carry out a successful secession. This was a point very strongly and rightly emphasised by the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home). We must remember not only what the effect would be of a successful secession on Nigeria, but also its effect, as my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) said, on other African countries.
The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) asked, if I remember rightly, that he should be given not what he called just a Foreign Office answer but a real answer from the Front Benches. What I am saying now I say out of a deep conviction formed over many years as to what is one of the most important points in world politics today. That important pivotal point is that the peoples


of Africa, who have for so many centuries been bullied, enslaved, kicked about by more powerful and sophisticated peoples, should now be able to take their proper place in the world. I do not believe that they will be able to do that unless they have a structure of efficient, viable States.
I believe that, if the existence of those States is threatened by tribal secessions, we shall find ourselves living in a world in which Africa is for ever dragging behind other continents. This, I believe, would be profoundly wrong. This surely is one of the essentials of the problem. I know that not all hon. Members accept it, but they must accept that many of us do believe this sincerely and deeply. They must also be prepared to realise that this is very much the African view of the problem.
It is in the light of this that Her Majesty's Government took from the start, and still take, the view that this attempt by the Ibos, whatever their grievances, at rebellion and secession to remedy their grievances, was a tragic and disastrous error and that therefore the Nigerian Government were right to resist it. But with that right there goes a duty—the duty on the Nigerian Government so to frame the structure of their State that there is the fullest possible degree of autonomy and development, not only for the Ibos, but for the many other peoples of whom the Nigerian Federation is made up.

Mr. Hugh Fraser: What does the Secretary of State call their grievances?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) was listened to reasonably. He must now listen.

Mr. Stewart: The right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) said that one of the objects of British policy has been to maintain a unitary Nigeria. Here, with respect, he really has got it wrong. Nigeria is and always has been a Federal State. It is most important that the Federal character of it should be emphasised so as to provide the Ibos with their proper place in it. This is exactly what the Federal Government are now prepared to do. The reconstruction of the State of Nigeria into 12 States gives the opportunity for the many peoples in it to co-operate in building up what could be one of the most

prosperous and fortunate nations in Africa.
We held that view, that the rebellion was tragic and disastrous and that the Nigerian Government, at one and the same time, had the right to resist it but the duty so to construct the State that there was a proper place for the Ibos. This, I think, is what many hon. Members mean when they speak of a political solution, that while the Nigerian Government are in our view right to resist secession, they must seek a political settlement, that is, a federal structure of such a kind that none of the peoples of Nigeria can say that they are unfairly deprived of opportunities for their own development and their own culture or the opportunity to play their proper part in Nigeria as a whole.
Although I realise that what I have said will not command the agreement of all hon. Members, I do not believe that anyone can say that the position which I have advanced is inhumane or unreasonable, and I believe that, even for those who cannot accept it, it must have a great basis in the real facts of the situation.
Granted that, the decision which we had to take about arms supply followed. We could not have said to Nigeria, "We gave you to understand that you would be able to obtain from firms in this country certain kinds of arms, but now, because you are faced with a rebellion, a rebellion which is in our view and in yours evil for Nigeria and dangerous for Africa, we shall cut them off". If we had said that, it would have been in Nigerian eyes and in fact tantamout to supporting the rebellion, supporting something which we believed to be wrong.

Mr. Stanley Henig: rose—

Mr. Stewart: No. I wish to make this quite clear because it has always been the Government's position. We have never claimed that we were neutral in the sense of taking no view as to the rights and wrongs of the issue. We believe that the rebellion was wrong and that is was right, therefore, not to take the deliberate act of cutting off arms from a Government faced with a rebellion of so disastrous a character.
Anyone who advocates that we should have taken the other view, that we should have cut off arms, must look at what the


results would have been. There would certainly have been a profound estrangement of ourselves from Nigeria and from Africa as a whole. It would have involved a great increase of Russian influence in Nigeria, and it would have involved a great risk to British people and British interests in Nigeria.
The House knows that I have on other occasions taken the view that there are circumstances in which it is entirely right for a country to say, "We must push our economic interests aside because there are overwelming moral considerations". That is the view which the Government took over the sale of arms to South Africa, the view which I expressed in the House. But in this case, who can say that it is axiomatic that it is morally right to cut off arms supplies from a country facing a rebellion of this disastrous character? It is not axiomatic, and I do not believe it to be true.

Mr. Thorpe: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that on 25th January, 1968, the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, in another place said, "We are not helping one side or another; we are entirely neutral"? Second, in view of what the right hon. Gentleman said about partition, may we assume that he would have used force to prevent partition in Ireland?

Mr. Stewart: No, Sir. We cannot argue the Irish question at the same time as we argue the Nigerian question.
It has been suggested that if we had taken a different view about arms we could have acted as mediators. Let us look at what actually happened. There are a great many countries which are not supplying arms to either side. There are a number which are either supplying or allowing arms to be supplied to Colonel Ojukwu. Have they been able either to mediate or to exercise influence on Colonel Ojukwu? Have they been able to say to him, "Will you open your country to mercy corridors for relief?", the main thing required to prevent starvation in Biafra? If we had refused to supply arms, any chance of acting as mediator would have gone at once. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), that I have never pretended, the Government were in the position of a mediator. For the very reasons I have just set out. I

understand that that cannot be so. If my hon. Friend will read what the Government had said he will see that he has not been misled on this point.

An Hon. Member: Mediating with arms.

Mr. Stewart: It is not true that the Government's policy amounted only to the decision on arms. If I have had to spend some time on that it is because of the emphasis many hon. Members have laid on it. But it was furthering our aim, so far as we could, to seek a peaceful solution, and this had to be done in consultation with the Nigerian Government. Since the suggestion has been made that we have never had any influence, that we have never worked for peace, I must remind the House that we brought about the conversations at Aburri. I must tell the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone that his allegation that the British High Commissioner encouraged, persuaded or in any way influenced the Nigerian Government to go back on that agreement is wholly without foundation. We further brought about the talks at Kampala, which could have brought peace if it had not been for encouragement to the secessionists from people outside.
In 1968 there were the meetings between my noble Friend, Lord Shepherd, and Sir Louis Mbanefo, and the visits of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State and my noble Friend, Lord Shepherd. More recently, at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Meeting, it was with our help and encouragement that Chief Awolowo said explicitly that he would meet the representatives of Colonel Ojukwu here without any preconditions.
The Leader of the Liberal Party was somewhat scornful on the question of whether we have had any influence. I would put the matter like this. It is obviously not possible to say, when one looks at the whole record of the Nigerian Government's behaviour, how much of it has been due to persuasions of ours and how much of it they might have done anyway. Whilst we have rightly criticised and condemned them for the recent bombing incidents, let us look at the whole record of their behaviour, remembering that they are a Government facing a rebellion and fighting for the whole


structure of their country. Let us notice what they have done. Throughout the whole struggle they have made it clear that they will talk and compromise about anything short of the dismemberment of Nigeria. They have admitted—and I think that this is unprecedented—international observers to go about with their forces to supervise the behaviour of those forces, and it is those observers who have torn to pieces the allegations of genocide. They have made it quite clear that they are willing, when a settlement is reached, to give guarantees for the safety of the Ibos, and would even have an observer force or something of that kind to see that those guarantees are kept.
On the question of relief, the Nigerian Government have made the generous offer of Obilago Airport. It is not they who stand in the way of pouring in relief by land. I am bound to say, remembering the strain under which they are placed—and I think we all know the terrible fact that when human beings wage war they are always likely to become more callous in the process—that I do not think one can condemn—far from it—the general record of the Nigerian Government, and I am not prepared to believe that the persuasions of this country, which has been in close touch with them throughout and which has always urged on them counsels of moderation and humanity, have been of no effect at all.
On the relief supplies, I do not think I need add much to what my hon. Friend said. He made it clear that, in response to the latest appeals from the Red Cross, we are going to contribute a further £1·1 million for relief, about half of which will be in food and the rest cash. He also announced our intention of making provision in the new financial year totalling this £1·1 million towards Nigerian relief, and there will be the ordinary procedure of a Supplementary Estimate.
Now there does lie on us the need to try to seek peace and settlement. If we are to do that, can we get an arms embargo? I should be deceiving the House if I pretended that getting an embargo was anything but very difficult. Many of my hon. Friends will remember that the attempts to bring about the policy that was known as non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War in practice

worked entirely to the advantage of one side. But we have not been idle about this.
We know the Russian view, which is that they are prepared to go on supplying in all circumstances. The French view is that they are not in fact supplying. We have raised this matter in Western European Union, and it is interesting to note that the recent decision of W.E.U. was that its wisest approach was to handle this in consultation with the O.A.U.
Governments which support the rebel cause hold strongly to their point of view. The Portuguese Government, for example, provide important transit and other facilities and presumably see this policy as part of their long-term defence of Portuguese colonial interests in Africa. Similar considerations arise in the case of other countries.
In this situation—and I hope I carry hon. Members with me here, for I am pointing out, as I must, the difficulties—it would be easy to pretend that we could make a striking initiative for an embargo tomorrow and try to conceal the fact that the chances of success are not very great. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] If we want success, the embargo has to be supervised inside Nigeria itself. There is no other way of making it effective.
That means, if the supervising job is to be done properly, that the international arms embargo would have to be accompanied by a cease-fire, and the same thing works the other way, because a cease-fire without an arms embargo would so clearly work to the advantage of the rebels that one could not reasonably ask the Nigerian Government to agree to it.
It seems to me, therefore, that the object of any steps must be a combination of the following things: an international arms embargo, a cease-fire, the meeting of the two sides without pre-conditions and, one ought to add to that, the opening of the "mercy" corridors for relief. I am bound to say that if Colonel Ojukwu maintains his opposition to that it would be difficult to place much reliance in good faith on the other issues.
As to meeting without pre-conditions, I must tell the House that the positions of the two sides on this have changed and it is difficult to be certain at any one moment that one is giving a completely accurate and up-to-date account of what their view would be. I simply


remind the House that, at the time of the Commonwealth Prime Minister's Conference, Chief Awolowo of Nigeria was prepared to meet Colonol Ojukwu's representatives on those terms. What we must try to work at is for such a situation to recur and, when it does recur, for there to be this time, as there was not at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, a response on Ojukwu's side.
By what mechanism could this be achieved? I must tell the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire that the problem of trying to do this through the United Nations would be that we would be tackling an international arms embargo, which, for reasons I have already mentioned is unwelcome to a number of countries, through a mechanism which would be extremely unattractive to the participants and to African countries who feel that the proper regional organisation is the Organisation of African Unity. I do not rule out an approach to the United Nations, indeed, I do not think one can give immediately a blueprint as to how we should try to reach the objectives I have mentioned——

Mr. Barnes: rose—

Mr. Stewart: I do not rule out the United Nations, I have pointed out the difficulties of it.
Above all, we must try and work, as much as we can, through the Organisation of African Unity. As for the part that the Commonwealth, the third agency mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman, could play, it seems that it could play a

part in any observer or peacekeeping forces that will be required after a settlement is reached. Our willingness to provide our contingent to such a force has already been announced.

I have tried to describe to the House what is the nature of a possible settlement that might be reached. I have not attempted to disguise the enormous difficulties, because there are here deep and profound differences of principle which divide the Nigerians from Ojukwu and his followers.

What I am suggesting could be attained if there is a real effort in other directions. We shall endeavour to do all we can to produce that result. The House knows that Britain does not hold this issue in the hollow of its hand, but we are more likely to be able to help if we accept the need for Africa, for the unity of her peoples and for the movement away from tribalism towards modern nationhood. That is why I feel obliged—and I do not do this with malice, but one must be plain—to say that I have not found it possible to accept the proposition of an immediate cut-off of arms supplies, which would not save a single life, which would make negotiations for an agreed embargo impossible, and which would weaken rather than strengthen our hands in anything we seek to do.

Mr. Henig: On a point of order——

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 62, Noes 232.

Division No. 118.]
AYES
[10.0 p.m.


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Gray, Dr. Hugh (Yarmouth)
Nabarro, Sir Gerald


Alldritt, Walter
Grffiths, Rt. Hn. James (Llanelly)
Newens, Stan


Baker, Kenneth (Acton)
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Noel-Baker, Rt. Hn. Phillp (Derby, S.)


Barnes, Michael
Heffer, Eric S.
Norwood, Christopher


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos. &amp; Fhm)
Hirst, Geoffrey
Orbach, Maurice


Bessell, Peter
Hooson, Emlyn
Orme, Stanley


Bidwell, Sydney
Hordern, Peter
Ridley, Hn. Ncholas


Birch, Rt. Hn. Nigel
Huckfield, Leslie
Rose, Paul


Black, Sir Cyril
Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Booth, Albert
Jackson, Peter M. (High Peak)
Rowlands, E.


Crouch, David
Jeger, Mrs. Lena (H'b'n&amp;St. P'cras, S.)
St. John-Stevas, Norman


Cunningham, Sir Knox
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Stainton, Keith


Currie, G. B. H.
Kelley, Richard
Steel, David (Roxburgh)


Davies, Ednyfed Hudson (Conway)
Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter &amp; Chatham)
Thorpe, Rt. Hn. Jeremy


Dickens, James
Kerr, Russell (Feltham)
Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.


Driberg, Tom
Kirk, Peter
Wainwright, Richard (Colne Valley)


Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th &amp; C'b'e)
Lee, John (Reading)
Winnick, David


Ewing, Mrs. Winifred
Lestor, Miss Joan
Woof, Robert


Faulds, Andrew
Longden, Gilbert



Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh (St'fford &amp; Stone)
Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Goodhart, Philip
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)
Mr. Stanley Henig and


Goodhew, Victor
Mikardo, Ian
Mr. Eric Lubbock.




NOES


Albu, Austen
Gregory, Arnold
Murray, Albert


Anderson, Donald
Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Neal, Harold


Archer, Peter
Gunter, Rt. Hn. R. J.
Oakes, Gordon


Ashley, Jack
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Ogden, Eric


Ashton, Joe (Bassetlaw)
Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
O'Malley, Brian


Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice
Hamling, William
Oram, Albert E.


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Hannan, William
Oswald, Thomas


Beaney, Alan
Harper, Joseph
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)


Bonn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Page, Derek (King's Lynn)


Binns, John
Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith
Paget, R. T.


Bishop, E. S.
Hattersley, Roy
Palmer, Arthur


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Hazell, Bert
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles


Boston, Terence
Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis
Parker, John (Dagenham)


Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur
Hilton, W. s.
Parkin, Ben (Paddington, N.)


Boyden, James
Hooley, Frank
Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)


Bradley, Tom
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Pavitt, Laurence


Bray, Dr. Jeremy
Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough)
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred


Brooks, Edwin
Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)
Pentland, Norman


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D
Howell, Denis (Small Heath)
Perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)


Brown, Rt. Hn. George (Belper)
Howie, W.
Prentice, Rt. Hn. R. E.


Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)
Hoy, James
Price, Christopher (Perry Barr)


Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)
Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)


Buchan, Norman
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
Probert, Arthur


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Hunter, Adam
Pursey, Cmdr. Harry


Callaghan, (Rt. Hn. James
Hynd, John
Randall, Harry


Cant, R. B.
Irvine, Sir Arthur (Edge Hill)
Rees, Merlyn


Carmichael, Neil
Jackson, Colin (B'h'se &amp; Spenb'gh)
Reynolds, Rt. Hn. G. W.


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Janner, Sir Barnett
Richard, Ivor


Chapman, Donald
Jay, Rt. Hn, Douglas
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy


Coe, Denis
Jeger, George (Goole)
Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth (St.P'c'as)


Coleman, Donald
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Rodgers, William (Stockton)


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Roebuck, Roy


Cronin, John
Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)


Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard
Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)
Ross, Rt. Hn. William


Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Ryan, John


Dalyell, Tam
Judd, Frank
Shaw, Arnold (llford, S.)



Kenyon, Clifford
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Darling, Rt. Hn. George
Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)
Short. Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)
Lawson, George
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
Leadbitter, Ted
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)
Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)
Silverman, Julius


Davies, Rt. Hn. Harold (Leek)
Lee, Rt. Hn. Jennie (Cannock)
Skeffington, Arthur


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Lever, Harold (Cheetham)
Small, William


de Freitas, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey
Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)
Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael


Delargy, Hugh
Lipton, Marcus
Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John


Dell, Edmund
Lomas, Kenneth
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.


Dewar, Donald
Loughlin, Charles
Taverne, Dick


Diamond, Rt. Hn. John
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Thomas, Rt. Hn. George


Dobson, Ray
Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Thomson, Rt. Hn. George


Dunn, James A.
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Tinn, James


Dunnett, Jack
McBride, Neil
Tomney, Frank


Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)
McCann, John
Tuck, Raphael


Eadie, Alex
MacColl, James
Urwin, T. W.


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
MacDermot, Niall
Varley, Eric G.


Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Macdonald, A. H.
Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)


Ellis, John
Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)
Walden, Brian (All Saints)


English, Michael
Mackie, John
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Ennals, David
Mackintosh, John P.
Wallace, George


Evans, Albert (Islington, S. W.)
Maclennan, Robert
Watkins, David (Consett)


Evans, Fred (Caerphilly)
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Watkins, Tudor (Brecon &amp; Radnor)


Evans, Ioan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley)
McNamara, J. Kevin
Weitzman, David


Fernyhough, E.
MacPherson, Malcolm
Wellbeloved, James


Finch, Harold
Mallalieu, J. P. W.(Huddersfield, E.)
Well, William (Walsall, N.)


Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
Marks, Kenneth
White, Mrs. Eirene


Fletcher, Rt. Hn. SirEric (Islington. E.)
Marquand, David
Whitlock, William


Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Marsh, Rt. Hn. Richard
Wilkins, W. A.


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Foley, Maurice
Mayhew, Christopher
Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)


Foot, Rt. Hn. Dingle (Ipswich)
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Williams, Clifford (Abertilery)


Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
Millan, Bruce
Williams. Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)


Ford, Ben
Miller, Dr. M. S,
Willis, Rt. Hn. George


Forrester, John
Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)
Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)


Fowler, Gerry
Molloy, William
Wilson, William (Coventry, 8.)


Fraser, John (Norwood)
Moonman, Eric
Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.


Freeson, Reginald
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Wyatt Woodrow


Gardner, Tony
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)



Ginsburg, David
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Gordon Walter, Rt. Hn. P. C.
Morris, John (Aberavon)
Mr. J. D. Concannon and


Greenwood, St. Hn. Anthony
Moyle, Roland
Mr. Charles Grey, C. B. E.

It being after Ten o'clock, the Motion for the adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

LEVEL CROSSING, MERTON PARK

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Concannon.]

10.10 p.m.

Mr. Humphrey Atkins: For six hours, we have been considering matters of great importance outside this country. Now, for half an hour, I want to ask the House to direct its attention to a matter which is very much more local but which nevertheless is of considerable importance and concern to my constituents.
Kingston Road in South-West London is a main thoroughfare running through Clapham, Tooting, and Merton to Kingston. It is marked as the A238 on the Ministry of Transport's maps. For part of its length, its northern boundary is in my constituency, and it is to that part which I want to ask the Minister to direct his attention this evening.
The road is crossed by a level crossing near Hartfield Road, S.W.19, which means that half the main road and half the level crossing are in my constituency, with the remainder in that of my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Sir C. Black), who I am glad to see in his place this evening.
This level crossing on a main road out of London has caused traffic difficulties for many years. The Merton and Morden Urban District Council has had in mind the need for improvement for a very long time. I am told that the possibility of improving the traffic conditions at this level crossing was first considered as long ago as 1936. In other words the local authority over 30 years ago considered that the traffic difficulties were such that something should be done, and hon. Members can readily understand that, if there were traffic difficulties 30 years ago, they are immeasurably increased today. I would say, in fact, that the difficulties are now appalling.
At this point, Kingston Road is only wide enough for one lane of road traffic in each direction, and the level crossing is similarly restricted. Naturally, the problems are worst at the morning and evening rush hours, not only because

wheeled traffic on the road is at its height at those times, but because there are more trains carrying people to and from work in London, requiring the level crossing to be closed more often just at the moment when wheeled traffic on the road requires it to be open for longer periods.
It is no exaggeration to say that at times in the morning and evening rush hours there are queues of traffic up to a mile in length. This in turn affects the side roads leading off Kingston Road, which are almost entirely residential. With traffic bumper to bumper along the main roads, residents seeking to emerge from the side roads in which they live find it virtually impossible to do so.
The problem has been recognised locally for a very long time, and suggestions have been made for improvements. This has not been very easy in the past, partly because there have been five bodies involved in any scheme for improvement: the Merton and Morden Urban District Council, the Wimbledon Borough Council, the Surrey County Council, British Railways, and the Ministry of Transport. Admittedly this is somewhat easier in present times in that, with the reorganisation of local government, there are now only four bodies involved instead of five: the Merton Borough Council, the Greater London Council, British Railways and the Ministry of Transport.
In 1960, a scheme was submitted to the Ministry for making improvements at this crossing. This scheme was sent back and the local authority was told to revise it because it did not meet the requirements of the Ministry of Transport. In February, 1961, another scheme was submitted. This, in its turn, was sent back in July, 1961, with a request for still further revision.
However, eventually in 1963 the Merton and Morden Urban District Council was told that the scheme which it had most recently submitted was included in the first part of the Ministry of Transport's rolling programme for 1965–1968. The then Minister of Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Mr. Marples) told me verbally and in a letter dated 28th July, 1964.
The way is now clear for the scheme to be pushed ahead without delay.


All that has happened since then is, first, that further alterations have had to be made to this improvement scheme, and, secondly, that the starting date for the scheme has been pushed further into the future.
The latest announcement by the Greater London Council is that this scheme will now start in the middle of 1973. In other words, five years ago the latest starting date for this scheme was four years ahead. Now, five years later, the starting date is still four years ahead. So it can truthfully be said that during the last five years no progress whatever has been made.
I recognise that all the blame does not lie with the Ministry of Transport. Other factors have intervened. Perhaps the most notable is the local government reorganisation in London which has replaced the Merton and Morden Urban District Council and the Wimbledon Borough Council with the council of the London Borough of Merton, and Surrey County Council with the Greater London Council in our area. There has also been some delay due to British Railways, to which I will refer in a moment. Nevertheless, some responsibility undoubtedly lies with the hon. Gentleman's Department, if only because in the end his Department supplies the greater part of the money.
I should like to emphasise again that 13 years have elapsed between the submission of the scheme in July 1960 by the Merton and Morden Urban District Council and the starting date of mid-1973. This tremendous delay has had two serious ill-effects upon my constituents and, I believe, upon the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon.
The first, to which I have already referred, is the continuing increase in the traffic problem. Anyone who studies traffic in London knows that the amount of traffic grows year by year, and that if no road improvements are made then the delays and difficulties which I have described also grow year by year.
The second difficulty is that for a great part of this period it has been known that schemes are afoot for making substantial alterations to this level crossing which would involve a lot of residential property in the immediate area. What is commonly described as planning blight

has affected a number of my constituents over many years.
On my side of Kingston Road—my hon. Friend will no doubt speak for his in a moment—there is a lot of residential property. Many of my constituents who wished to sell their houses have been unable to do so. They are quite ordinary people. Some of them are professional people. I know—so does the hon. Gentleman from the records in his Department—of no less than four doctors and a dentist. Indeed the hon. Gentleman has had correspondence from the Mother Superior of a convent. All these people, who wished either to develop or to sell their properties, have been unable to do so for many years. The House will well understand the hardship which can be caused by this kind of planning blight.
The present position is that three weeks ago the G.L.C. publicly announced a further delay in the implementation of the improvement scheme from 1972 to 1973. I applied at once to raise the matter on the Adjournment. Two weeks ago an entirely new scheme was announced by the G.L.C. This new scheme envisages the purchase by the G.L.C. of a stretch of railway belonging to British Railways, the loop from Merton Park to Tooting, which it seems they no longer require, and which the G.L.C. plans to convert into a road.
This is very good news, because those concerned with the matter, including myself, had thought of this a long time ago. Indeed, British Railways had been approached to see whether they would be prepared to sell this stretch of the railway, but in 1966 they said that they would not because they needed it. However, they have now changed their minds, and I am delighted, because this conversion of a stretch of railway track into a road will not only help to solve the problem at Merton Park level crossing, but will ease the problem a little further up the road towards London at the South Wimbledon Junction which is also the subject of further road schemes.
I want the Minister to do three things. First, will he tell the House precisely what is the present position regarding the improvement scheme for Merton Park level crossing, and also the South Wimbledon Junction? Secondly, will he recognise publicly that serious difficulties have been created for the people in the area,


most of whom are my constituents? Thirdly, will he assure the House that he regards this improvement as long overdue and now urgent, and will he undertake that not only will he not put further obstructions in the way of this improvement being made, but will actively assist to bring this long overdue scheme about as soon as may be?

10.23 p.m.

Sir Cyril Black: I am grateful to have the oportunity for just a moment or two to associate myself with everything that has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Merton and Morden (Mr. Humphrey Atkins). I think that he has stated the case clearly, and with moderation. I do not dissent from one word that he has said, and I think that the case has been very adequately deployed.
I have an almost equal constituency interest in this matter with my hon. Friend. I can claim a very long acquaintance with this problem, because I have lived in this part of the outer ring of London for about 50 years. I have served continuously on the local authority since 1942, and I was a member of Surrey County Council from 1943 to 1965, at a time when Surrey County Council was the major road authority for this area.
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the delays, the nuisance, and the frustration caused by the traffic conditions at this level crossing, and in addition to the terrible delays to which road users are subjected there is the serious problem of planning blight, to which my hon. Friend referred.
During my long period on the local authority there have been many occasions on which efforts have been made to get action on this matter, and at various times it has seemed as though something promising was about to take place, but as time has passed the prospect of action has seemed to recede further and further into the future, instead of coming nearer as one would hope.
I am not concerned to try to assign responsibility. My hon. Friend is right to say that the responsibility for these long delays does not rest with any one authority, but is shared by several. But that is not what my hon. Friend and I are concerned about. We are anxious not

to assign responsibility for what has-happened in the past, but to get some definite assurance for action, and action now. The year 1973 is, to our constituents, a completely unacceptable starting date for the beginning of an amelioration of these conditions. I hope that the Minister will be able to give categorical and satisfactory assurances in response to the questions which my hon. Friend has addressed to him.

10.26 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Bob Brown): The hon. Member for Merton and Morden (Mr. Humphrey Atkins) and his hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Sir C. Black) have referred to the length of time these highway proposals at Merton Park Level Crossing have been under consideration. It may be of help to the House if I just summarise events as we see them.
The A238 is a principal road running from Kingston-upon-Thames to Merton. It forms, with A298, a link between the Worthing Road, the A24 and the Portsmouth Road, the A3. It is used extensively by traffic bound for central London as an alternative to the A3.
The level crossing to which the hon. Member refers is on the A238 near Merton Park railway station; the secondary route, the B285 also uses this level crossing, which was constructed in about 1855 as part of the Wimbledon-Croydon railway. For 60 years there have been attempts to do away with this level crossing because of the delays which it causes to traffic. Unfortunately these attempts have not been successful, for various reasons.
Serious discussions were started between Surrey County Council and the Ministry as far back as 1929 when we agreed to the appointment of a consulting engineer. Eventually a scheme was agreed for raising the railway as a single line on a viaduct above this crossing and another in Dundonald Road, but the war, of course, prevented it being carried out. The post-war scheme was revived in 1954 but then met the serious financial restrictions of the day, which caused it to be deferred. By 1958 the traffic difficulties had become so acute that it was clear that the scheme should be proceeded with as a matter of urgency.


Between then and 1965 discussions and consultations took place between the Ministry, the county council and the Merton and Morden Urban District Council.
In 1960 plans and details were submitted to us of a scheme to raise the railway on a viaduct and to provide a roundabout at road level. In May, 1963, we were able to provide in our rolling programme for the period 1965–68 for a scheme to eliminate this level crossing at an estimated cost of £2 million. When the right hon. Member for Wallasey (Mr. Marples) was the Minister, and wrote to the hon. Gentleman, our engineers were not convinced that the council's proposals—complicated by the need to keep the line in operation while it was being raised—would provide the best solution and asked that alternatives be investigated. The urban district council, with our approval and the agreement of British Railways, appointed Messrs. Mott, Hay & Anderson as consulting engineers to carry out this investigation.
With the reorganisation of local government in London, on 1st April, 1965, the London Borough of Merton became the local authority for the area and the highway authority for the secondary route, B285. Kingston Road, A238, however, became a metropolitan principal road, with the Greater London Council as highway authority.
The G.L.C. was at that time concerned to review all the schemes to improve metropolitan principal roads which it had inherited from the former highway authorities. Moreover, it had become known that British Railways might be contemplating the closure of the line to Merton station. If that had happened, the proposed scheme would have become redundant through the removal of the level crossing. It was not until October, 1966, that British Railways finally confirmed that there was no prospect of the line being closed within the foreseeable future.
The next difficulty was that the recommended scheme would affect two buildings on the statutory list of buildings of historic and architectural interest. This entailed the preparation of alternative draft schemes which would avoid these buildings. In March, 1967, the consultants were asked to report further on one

of these schemes, which they did in June, 1967. At the end of that month the G.L.C. approved the scheme in principle subject to consultation with the interested authorities.
Efforts to reach a satisfactory solution continued, and we agreed to retain the scheme in the grant programme. It was apparent, however, that land acquisition would be a lengthy process and there could be little prospect of the works being started before the middle of 1972. In June, 1968, we were able to advise the G.L.C. that its plans for the improvement were technically acceptable as the basis for an application for a 75 per cent. grant towards its cost.
I should, perhaps explain that the G.L.C. has two other schemes to improve the A238 in the London Borough of Merton. The first is to construct a roundabout at South Wimbledon station at the junction of the A238 with the A24 and the A219. In 1964 we added this scheme to the programme for 1968–69. The second is to widen Merton High Street, the A238.
This brings the story up to the present. However, as the hon. Member for Merton and Morden said, a fresh factor has emerged during the past few weeks. This is the very distinct possibility that British Rail may be able to dispense with the single track railway line between Merton Park and Tooting. This is at present used only for goods traffic.
G.L.C. officials consider that the land occupied by this line and its associated sidings could be used for the construction of a new road, which would enable much of the A238 traffic to avoid Merton High Street and the road junction at South Wimbledon station. The advantage of building such a road is that the extensive demolition of property on the existing line of the A238 in Merton would not be necessary and a much simpler scheme could be adopted to deal with the level crossing.
I am told that the present position is that officers of British Rail have agreed to discuss with the G.L.C. the possible release of this land, and on what terms. If all goes well with these discussions, the G.L.C. hopes to be able to put firm proposals to my Department by the summer of this year.
As hon. Members are concerned that the new proposals will further delay a


scheme to deal with the level crossing at Merton, I assure the House that we expect that the proposed new road, including an underpass on the site of the present level crossing, will take less time than would be needed for the three schemes at present programmed. Furthermore, we hope that the overall cost will now be appreciably less.
Reference was also made to the traffic problem at South Wimbledon station. We appreciate that the traffic management scheme in operation at this junction as an interim measure is not liked by residents. It involves the use of side roads and streets which were neither designed nor intended for the use of through traffic. Nevertheless, these are public roads and it is essential that we make the best use of them, at least until time and money can be devoted to alternative means of meeting the needs of traffic.
The prospect of a new route being provided which will drain off so much of the traffic which at present has to use this junction offers hope of relief to these residents. I do not suggest that a rural calm is likely to settle on this junction, but the need for through traffic to be diverted through side roads will certainly disappear when the new route is available.
I understand, meanwhile, that the London Borough of Merton has suggested some modifications of the existing traffic management arrangements at the junction. The G.L.C., as traffic authority, will doubtless give careful consideration to the borough's suggestions.
Finally, I should like to deal with the reference by the hon. Member for Merton and Morden to the problem of blight.
When it is known that a road is to be improved, but without details of the

improvement, owners and occupiers of property along the route are inevitably affected by uncertainty about the effects of the works. This uncertainty is removed only when the improvement scheme has been worked out in detail and the extent of any necessary property acquisition precisely determined.
We assist in this respect by accepting for immediate grant the cost of land acquired in advance by a highway authority for a programmed scheme of which we have approved the outline. This position was reached in respect of the level crossing scheme in June, 1968, but not yet for the proposed roundabout at South Wimbledon station or for the widening in Merton High Street.
As soon as the proposed new road along the railway has been agreed in principle, this blight will be removed from the A238, except in the vicinity of the level crossing. I am quite sure, however, that the Greater London Council will lose no time in designing the works that will be needed for the construction of an underpass so as to resolve these remaining doubts. For our part, we will certainly not delay our consideration of the acceptance into our programme of the revised scheme in place of the existing programme schemes for the route.
I sympathise very much with residents of Merton and with drivers who have suffered so long from the acute traffic congestion at the Kingston Road level crossing, and in the vicinity of South Wimbledon station. It seems, however—I am sure that both hon. Members will be as pleased as I am—that a solution more satisfactory than could have been foreseen in the past is now almost within reach.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-three minutes to Eleven o'clock.